Unsung History: Recent Episodes

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Global rum sales are expected to reach nearly $28 billion USD by the year 2033, making it one of the ten most popular alcoholic beverages in the world. In this episode we look at the early history of rum, how its invention and production were intertwined with the transatlantic slave trade, and how abolitionists tried to find free-labor sources of the popular liquor. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Jordan B. Smith, Associate Professor of History at Widener University, and author of The Invention of Rum: Creating the Quintessential Atlantic Commodity (use code PENN-JSMITH30 at Penn Press for 30% off).

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Fun Island,” by Geoff Harvey - Pixabay; used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Barrels of Rum,” by MAClarke21, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “How Authentic Caribbean Rum Is Made [video],” West Indies Rum and Spirits Producers' Association (WIRSPA), YouTube, May 16, 2014.
• “About Barbados: History Of Barbados,” Barbados, org.
• “The History of Jamaica,” Jamaica Information Service.
• “Historical Context: Facts about the Slave Trade and Slavery,” by Steven Mintz, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
• “Top 10 best-selling rum Brand Champions 2025,” by Lauren Bowes, The Spirits Business, July 1, 2025.
• “Global Rum Market Size, Share, Growth, and Regional Forecast, 2025 – 2032,” Persistence Market Research, June 20, 2025.
• “20 Countries that Export the Most Rum in the World,” by Sultan Khalid, Insider Monkey via Yahoo Finance, March 18, 2024.

Donate to Recovery Efforts in Jamaica:

• Jamaican Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM)
• World Central Kitchen
• Project Hope
• One Love Brigade

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New Orleans is known for its unique cuisine that blends and highlights the many cultural roots of the city and its residents. The history of food distribution in New Orleans is just as unique within the American landscape, relying heavily on public food systems, both street vendors and municipally-run public markets. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Ashley Rose Young, a curator and public historian who serves as the American History Curator in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress and is a Smithsonian Research Associate. Her book, Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in New Orleans has just been published.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “On my way to New Orleans,” composed by Albert Von Tilzer with lyrics by Ballard MacDonald; this performance was sung by George O’Connor on February 10, 1915, in New York, and is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is: “French Market, New Orleans, La.,” Detroit Publishing Company, 1910; there are no known restrictions on publication, and the image is accessible via the Library of Congress.

Additional sources:

• “New Orleans History 101: A beginner’s guide to understanding the Crescent City,” by Historic New Orleans Collection Visitor Services Staff, January 21, 2022.
• “Timeline: New Orleans,” PBS American Experience.
• “New Orleans Then and Now: The French Market,” by Ellen Terrell, Library of Congress Blog, July 12, 2018.
• “The Native Roots of the French Market,”by Kalie Rhodes, New Orleans Historical: A project by The Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies at the University of New Orleans, February 11, 2021.
• “200 Years of Commerce, Community & Culture,” French Market District.
• “New Orleans Street Vendors: A long history of African American entrepreneurship,” by Zella Palmer, 64 Parishes, December 1, 2019.

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In 1912, wealthy Savannahian Juliette Gordon Low supposedly called her cousin and exclaimed: “Come right over! I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, for all of America, and for the world.” That something would become the Girl Scouts of the USA, an organization that throughout its history struggled to fulfill its initial promise of inclusion for all girls while trying to maintain an apolitical stance with deference to local councils. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Amy Farrell, the James Hopes Caldwell Memorial Chair and Professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Dickinson College and author of Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “By the campfire,” composed by Percy Wenrich with lyrics by Mabel Elizabeth Girling; the performance by the Sterling Trio on February 18, 1919, in New York, is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox and is in the public domain. The episode image is “Girl Scouts, circa 1940s,” taken at Camp Long; Item 31422, Ben Evans Recreation Program Collection (Record Series 5801-02), Seattle Municipal Archives; used under CC BY 2.0.

Additional sources:

• “Practical Patriotism: Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, and Americanization,” by Leslie Hahner, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 5(2), 2008, 113–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420801989702.
• “New Quarter Honors Juliette Gordon Low, Founder of Girl Scouts,” by By Shannon Browning-Mullis, Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, March 20, 2025.
• “Early Girl Scouting,” Georgia Historical Society.
• “Girl Scouts Through the Years,” Women’s History and Cultural Center.
• “100 years of Girl Scouts: part I,” by Adam Frost, Smithsonian Institute, May 30, 2012
• “Quick History: Juliette Gordon Low [video],” Northeast Georgia History Center, March 13, 2020.
• “Golden Eaglet: The Story of a Girl Scout [video],” Girl Scouts USA, 1919.
• “From 18 girls in Savannah to a global movement to make a difference,” Girl Scouts USA.
• “Girl Scout Cookie History,” Girl Scouts USA.

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Zoe Anderson Norris, known to her friends in the Ragged Edge Klub as the Queen of Bohemia, was born in Kentucky in 1860, moved to Wichita, Kansas, with her first husband, and then to New York City, where she forged a career for herself as a journalist and novelist, eventually launching her own magazine, The East Side. In The East Side and in her journalism, she often focused on the lives of immigrants and the poor. Joining me in this episode is Eve M. Kahn, author of Queen of Bohemia Predicts Own Death: Gilded-Age Journalist Zoe Anderson Norris.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Come to the land of Bohemia,” composed by George Evans, with lyrics by Ren Shields; this performance by Hatvey Hindermyer was recorded on April 30, 1908, in New York, and is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is of Zoe Anderson Norris from 1909, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “To Fight for the Poor With My Pen: Zoe Anderson Norris, Queen of Bohemia,” Grolier Club Online Exhibitions.
• “Zoe Anderson Norris,” by W.J. Lampton, New York Times, February 27, 1914.
• “Zoe A. Norris,” Kentucky in American Letters, 1784-1912,” by John Wilson Townsend, Cedar Rapids, IA: Torch Press, 1913.

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Dr. Marguerite Phillips Dorsey Cartwright, born May 17, 1910, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a journalist, sociologist, educator, and actress, who served as a correspondent for the United Nations, attended and wrote about both the Bandung Conference and the All-African People's Conference, and was appointed to the Provisional Council of the University of Nigeria, where she became one of five trustees. Joining me in this episode to discuss both Marguerite Cartwright and Black women’s leadership in the fight for human rights is Dr. Keisha N. Blain, Professor of History and Africana Studies at Brown University and author of Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is “Down South blues,” written by Fletcher Henderson, Alberta Hunter, and Ethel Waters, and performed by The Virginians, in New York City, on September 25, 1923; the audio is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox and is in the public domain. The episode image is “Portrait of Marguerite Cartwright wearing a dashiki, undated,” by John Schiff; the photograph is courtesy Leo Baeck Institute and is used under fair use guidelines.

Additional Sources:

• “Marguerite Cartwright and African-American Internationalism [video],” Society of Southwest Archivists, August 13, 2021.
• “M. P. CARTWRIGHT,” The New York Times, May 9, 1986, Section D, Page 22.
• “Introducing Marguerite Cartwright,” Amistad Research Center.
• “Cartwright, Marguerite, 1910-1986,” Biographical Note, Marguerite Cartwright papers, Amistad Research Center.
• “Bandung Conference (Asian-African Conference), 1955,” Office of the Historian, United States Department of State.
• “AAPC Background,” Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana.

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The feminist anti-rape movement began in the late 1960s at the height of women’s liberation. As rape crisis centers relied on federal grants aimed at prosecution of those committing sexual violence, feminists worried about the conservatizing influence of those funds, and Black women in particular were not well-served by the developing model. Black women activists found their own methods to combat rape and to care for survivors. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Caitlin Reed Wiesner, Assistant Professor of History at Mercy University in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and author of Between the Street and the State: Black Women's Anti-Rape Activism Amid the War on Crime.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Emotional Piano Music,” by Mikhail Smusev, used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Black Women Matter,” taken on September 30, 2017, at the March for Racial Justice by Miki Jourdan; the image is available on Flickr and is available for use, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Additional Sources:

• “Feminism: The Second Wave,” National Women’s History Museum, June 18, 2020.
• “How Ronald Reagan Tried to Shrink Government Spending,” by Christopher Klein, History.com, Published: November 21, 2024, and Last Updated: May 28, 2025.
• “A brief history of the Victims of Crime Act,” by Blair Ames, U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, October 11. 2024.
• “The 2022 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization,” Congress.gov.
• “What are Rape Crisis Centers and how have they changed over the years?” National Sexual Violence Resource Center, September 15, 2021.
• Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN).

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The First Amendment to the US Constitution says that Congress cannot make law abridging the freedom of speech, but by as early at 1798, Congress was restricting immigration to the country on the basis of the ideological beliefs of the people who wanted to immigrate. While the reasons for restrictions have changed over time, as has the mechanism by which they’re enforced, the basic principle continues to today. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Julia Rose Kraut, legal historian and author of Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode music is “The Mask of Anarchy 1 (Strings)” by Victory Day from Pixabay in accordance with the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is "The Anarchist riot in Chicago: a dynamite bomb exploding among the police," by Thure de Thulstrup and published in the May 15th, 1886, Harper's Weekly 30 (1534): 312-313; image is in the Public Domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Nationality Act of 1790,” Immigration History, The Immigration and Ethnic History Society.
• “Alien and Sedition Acts (1798),” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
• “The Alien Enemies Act: The One Alien and Sedition Act Still on the Books,” by Scott Bomboy, National Constitution Center, March 17, 2025.
• “The Sedition Act of 1798,” History Art, and Archives, United States House of Representatives.
• “Haymarket Affair: Topics in Chronicling America,” Library of Congress.
• “May 4, 1886: Haymarket Tragedy,” Zinn Education Project.
• “Emma Goldman (1869-1940),” PBS American Experience.

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Both Abigail Adams and Benjamin Franklin took trips in England to trace their family histories, and they weren’t alone among 18th century Americans, many of whom took a keen interest in genealogy and family connections. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Karin Wulf, Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library, and Professor of History at Brown University and author of Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is “Nothing like that in our family,” composed by Seymour Furth with lyrics by William A. Heelan and performed by Billy Murray on April 24, 1906; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Sampler,” by Sophia Dyer, 1819; the image is in the public domain and is available via the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Additional Sources:

• “Crossings- Abigail Was Here (Devonshire),” KathleenBitetti.com.
• “Benjamin Franklin to Deborah Franklin, 6 September 1758,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-08-02-0034. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 8, April 1, 1758, through December 31, 1759, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965, pp. 133–146.]
• “Genealogical Chart of the Franklin Family, [July 1758],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-08-02-0029. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 8, April 1, 1758, through December 31, 1759, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965, p. 120.]
• “Eliot’s Bible,” by Neely Tucker, Library of Congress Blog, August 6, 2024.
• “Isaiah Thomas Folio Bible, 1791,” Houston Christian University Dunham Bible Museum.
• “How Genealogy Became Almost as Popular as Porn,” by Gregory Rodriguez, Time Magazine, May 30, 2014.
• “Why Are Americans Obsessed with Genealogy?” by Libby Copeland, Psychology Today, October 13, 2020.
• “Our Story,” Ancestry.com.

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Before American independence and the Bill of Rights promising religious freedom, the American colonies were English territory governed by English religious law that mandated worship according to the Book of Common Prayer. Even Maryland, which had been founded as a place for Catholics to worship freely, was majority Protestant and intolerant of public Catholicism by the time of the Revolution. Nonetheless, Catholics, including wealthy English landowners, Irish servants, and enslaved Africans, continued to live and worship throughout the American colonies, finding ways to keep their beliefs and customs alive. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Susan Juster, W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at the Huntington Library and author of A Common Grave: Being Catholic in English America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Ave Maria,” composed by Charles Gounod and sung by Florence Hayward; the recording was made on January 30, 1905, in Philadelphia and is in the public domain and can be accessed via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “The Founding of Maryland, 1634,” painted by Emmanuel Leutze in 1860; the painting is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists,” Library of Congress.
• “10 facts about U.S. Catholics,” byJustin Nortey, Patricia Tevington, and Gregory A. Smith, Pew Research Center, March 4, 2025.
• “Maryland's History,” Maryland Secretary of State.
• “The Catholic church in colonial days : the thirteen colonies, the Ottawa and Illinois country, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, 1521-1763,” by John Gilmary Shea, 1886.
• “American Catholic History Resources,” The Catholic University of America.
• “Catholicism in the Early South,” by Maura Jane Farrelly, Journal of Southern Religion 14 (2012).
• “Descendants of Jesuit Slaveholding and Jesuits of the United States Announce Historic Partnership,” Jesuit Conference of Canada and the U.S.

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In August of 1893, Madeleine Pollard sued Congressman William C.P. Breckinridge of Kentucky for breach of promise, claiming that he had promised to marry her but then had married another woman. By the time of the trial, Pollard and the much-older Breckinridge had been involved in an affair for nearly a decade. Breckinridge’s legal team attempted to paint Pollard as an “adventuress,” going so far as to hire an undercover detective – Jane Tucker – to get dirt on Pollard, but it was Breckinridge’s reputation that suffered as a result of the revelations in the trial, especially with the women of Kentucky. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe, Professor of History at the University of New England in Maine and author of Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Wait until you see my Madeline,” composed by Albert Von Tilzer with lyrics by Lew Brown and performed by Billy Jones; the audio was recorded in Camden, New Jersey, on May 4, 1921 and is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photo of Madeleine Pollard, by C.M. Bell, produced between 1873 and ca. 1916; the image is available via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, and there are no known restrictions on publication.

Additional Sources:

• “The Celebrated Trial, Madeline Pollard vs. Breckinridge, The Most Noted Breach of Promise Suit in the History of Court Records,” American Printing and Binding Company, 1894, via the Internet Archive.
• “The Court Case That Inspired the Gilded Age’s #MeToo Moment,” by Annie Diamond, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2018.
• “Sex, politics and broken promises grabbed headlines in Lexington in 1893,” by Liz Carey, The Lexington Herald-Leader, April 23, 2025.
• "“Not Ruined, but Hindered”: Rethinking Scandal, Re-examining Transatlantic Sources, and Recovering Madeleine Pollard," by Elizabeth DeWolfe, in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 31 no. 2, 2014, p. 300-310.
• “BRECKINRIDGE, William Campbell Preston,” United States House of Representatives History, Art, and Archives.
• “W.C.P. BRECKINRIDGE DEAD.; Ex-Congressman's Public Career Ended After the Pollard Suit,” The New York Times, November 20, 1904.

Related Episode:

• Sophonisba Breckinridge

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On the slave ships that sailed between Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and the West Coast of Africa from the 16th through the 19th Centuries, the crews included not just white sailors but also Black mariners, including a significant number of crewmen who were themselves enslaved. These enslaved mariners were not just a source of inexpensive labor but were also valued for their geographic, linguistic, and cultural skills, and they, in turn, could use the opportunity of labor on slave ships as a means of social mobility and eventually legal emancipation, or sometimes the chance for flight. Joining me in this episode to discuss these mariners is Dr. Mary E. Hicks, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Bahia Sunrise,” used under the Envato Market License - Music Standard License. The episode image is “Night Chase of the Brigantine Slaver Windward by HM Steam-Sloop Alecto,” Illustration for The Illustrated London News, by Frederick James Smyth, May 1, 1858; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

• “A Brief History of Brazil,” by José Fonseca, The New York Times 2006.
• “A Chronology of Brazilian History,” The Atlantic,” February 1956.
• “2.3 The African Slave Trade and Slave Life,” Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship.
• “4.2 Slavery and Abolition in the 19th Century,” Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, Brown University Center for Digital Scholarship.
• “The Contraband Slave Trade to Brazil, 1831-1845,” by Robert Conrad, Hispanic American Historical Review 1 November 1969; 49 (4): 617–638.
• “‘We need to tell people everything’: Portugal grapples with legacy of colonial past,” by Sam Jones, Gonçalo Fonseca, and Philip Oltermann, The Guardian, October 5, 2020.

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Ruth Reynolds, born in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1916 to a strict Methodist family, may have seemed an unlikely ally to the cause of Puerto Rican independence, but she devoted her life to what she saw as her “sacred and patriotic duty” as an American to convincing her country to withdraw from Puerto Rico “so that our nation may stand before the world free from any suggestion of imperialist ambition.” Facing surveillance by the FBI and insular police and even incarceration for her views, Reynolds never backed down from her solidarity, but she was always careful to listen to the people of Puerto Rico and never to impose her view on them. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Lisa G. Materson, Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and author of Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship, and the Battle for Puerto Rico's Independence.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is the original mid-19th century fast-tempo arrangement of “La Borinqueña,” which later as a slower arrangement became the regional anthem of Puerto Rico; the performance is by the United States Navy and is in the public domain; it is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is from the arrest of Carmen María Pérez González, Olga Viscal and Ruth Reynolds, January 4, 1951, taken by Benjamin Torres, and archived at the Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad de Puerto Rico; the photograph is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

• “Ruth M. Reynolds Papers,” Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Centro Library & Archives, Hunter College, CUNY.
• “Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives,” Library of Congress.
• “Puerto Rican Independence Movement [video],” American History TV, C-Span, April 13, 2018.
• “Remembering Don Pedro: An Online History of Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos.”
• “Puerto Rico’s Independence Movement: What Americans need to know about the PIP and Puerto Rico's Independence,” by Javier A. Hernandez, LA Progressive, Originally posted January 27, 2025 and updated February 12, 2025.
• “How the U.S. silenced calls for Puerto Rico's independence [video],” by Bianca Gralau, August 26, 2021.
• “The Case for Puerto Rican Independence,” by Alberto C. Medina, Current Affairs, April 5, 2024.

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In March 1972, Selma James distributed a pamphlet that declared: “If we raise kids, we have a right to a living wage. . . WE DEMAND WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK. All housekeepers are entitled to wages. (Men too).” Soon it was a global movement, with Wages for Housework branches in the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, and several other countries, and autonomous groups like Black Women for Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Emily Callaci, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Get yourself a broom and sweep your troubles away,” composed by Albert Von Tilzer, with lyrics by James Brockman and Billy Rose, and performed by Frank Crumit and Frank E. Banta, in New York on December 19, 1924; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a Wages for Housework poster drawn by Jacquie Ursula Caldwell in 1974, From the collection of Silvia Federici copyright Creative Commons, available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “A Woman’s Place,” Selma James, 1953.
• “Women and the Subversion of the Community: A Mariarosa Dalla Costa Reader,” by Mariarosa Della Costa, 2019.
• “Statement of the International Feminist Collective,” July 1972.
• “Wages Against Housework,” by Silvia Federici, 1975.
• “All Work and No Pay [video],” Made by the Wages for Housework Campaign with the BBC TV's Open Door series, 1976, posted by Global Women’s Strike, January 15, 2023.
• “The women who demanded wages for housework - Witness History, BBC World Service [video],” Witness History, BBC World Service, February 12, 2014.
• “Covid-19 has made housework more visible, but it still isn’t valued,” by Kevin Sapere, The Washington Post, April 8, 2021.
• “Wages for Housework is 50. This is the change it has inspired,” by Leila Hawkins, Nadja.co, April 16, 2022.
• “‘They say it is love, we say it is unwaged work’ – 50 years of fighting to be paid for housework,” by Rosa Campbell, Gloria Media, December 19, 2022.
• “The ‘true value of women’s work,’” by Kristina García, Penn Today, July 26, 2023.
• Care Income Now

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Amelia Jenks Bloomer was many things: writer and publisher, public speaker, temperance reformer, advocate for women’s rights and dress reform, and adoptive mother. She was not the inventor of the trousers for women that came to bear her name – bloomers – although she wore them and wrote about them for many years. Throughout her life, even as poor health often stood in her way, Amelia Bloomer took action, never waiting for someone else to do what was needed. I’m joined in this episode by writer Sara Catterall, author of Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-Fashion Icon.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Lily of the prairie,” composed and with lyrics by Kerry Mills, performed by Billy MMurray and the Haydn Quartet on July 7, 1907, in Camden, New Jersey; this recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is an illustration of Amelia Bloomer from Illustrated London News with the description: "Amelia Bloomer , Originator Of The New Dress. — From A Daguerreotype By T. W. Brown,” published August 27, 1851; the illustration is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Amelia Bloomer Didn’t Mean to Start a Fashion Revolution, But Her Name Became Synonymous With Trousers,” by Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine, May 24, 2018.
• “Amelia Bloomer – Publisher and Advocate for Woman’s Rights,” VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project.
• “Amelia Bloomer: Topics in Chronicling America,” Library of Congress.
• “Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894),” by Arlisha R. Norwood, NWHM Fellow, National Women’s History Museum, 2017.
• “Amelia Bloomer,” National Park Service.
• “Petition of Amelia Bloomer Regarding Suffrage in the West,” by Linda Simmons, National Archives.
• “Life and writings of Amelia Bloomer,” by D. C. Bloomer, United States: Arena Publishing Company, 1895. Via Project Guternberg.

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My guest today is Dr. Martha S. Jones, the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, professor of history, and a professor at the SNF Agora Institute at the Johns Hopkins University and author of The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir. In this book, Prof. Jones researches her family’s past to understand how each generation encountered and negotiated the color line, beginning with her great-great-great-grandmother who survived enslavement and raised a free family.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode audio is “Family trouble blues,” composed by Olman J. Cobb, and performed in New York on May 5, 1923, with Lizzie Miles on vocals and Clarence Johnson on piano; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is Jennie Holley Jones and family, from the cover of The Trouble of Color.

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The Universal Negro Improvement Association is often most closely associated with Marcus Garvey, but from the beginning, the work of women was essential to the development of the organization. Amy Ashwood co-founded the UNIA with Garvey, and it was her connections and capital that launched the Negro World newspaper, but after her brief marriage to and divorce from Garvey, she was removed from the UNIA and the newspaper. Other women, like Garvey’s second wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, and actress Henrietta Vinton Davis, played important and public roles in the UNIA, especially during Garvey’s incarceration, but their contributions aren’t as widely remembered as Garvey’s. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Natanya Duncan, associate professor of history and director of Africana studies at Queens College CUNY, and author of An Efficient Womanhood: Women and the Making of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is "Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement Association," a studio recording made by African-American leader Marcus Garvey in New York in July 1921, and adapted from his longer speech "A Membership Appeal from Marcus Garvey to the Negro Citizens of New York;" it is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is a photograph of Henrietta Vinton Davis, published in Women of distinction: remarkable in works and invincible in character by L. A. Scruggs in 1893; the image is in the public domain and is available via Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.

Additional Sources:

• “Women of the Universal Negro Improvement Association,” by Dr. Melissa Brown, BlackFeminisms.com.
• “Uncovering the Silences of Black Women’s Voices in the Age of Garvey,” by Keisha N. Blain, Black Perspectives, November 29, 2015.
• “Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind,” PBS.
• “Theorizing (with) Amy Ashwood Garvey,” by Robbie Shilliam, Chapter in Women’s International Thought: A New History, edited by Patricia Owens and Katharina Rietzler, 158–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
• ""Negro Women Are Great Thinkers as Well as Doers": Amy Jacques-Garvey and Community Feminism, 1924-1927," by Ula Y. Taylor, Journal of Women's History 12, no. 2 (2000): 104-126.
• ”Black History Month: Amy Jacques Garvey,” by Emily Claessen, King’s College London, October 20, 2023.
• “The inside story of the pardon of Marcus Garvey,” by DeNeen L. Brown, The Washington Post, February 1, 2025.
• “Henrietta Vinton Davis: Lady Commander Order of the Nile,” by Meserette Kentake, Kentake Page, August 15, 2015.
• "“If Our Men Hesitate Then the Women of the Race Must Come Forward”: Henrietta Vinton Davis and the UNIA in New York," by Natanya Duncan, New York History, vol. 95 no. 4, 2014, p. 558-583.
• “Laura Adorkor Kofey research collection,” New York Public Library.
• “After 85 years, slain minister's Jacksonville legacy lingers,” by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville.com, March 7, 2013.

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After emancipation, formerly enslaved Black Americans knew that the key to economic freedom was land ownership, but as soon as they began to acquire land, local tax assessors began to overassess their land and exact steep penalties if they couldn’t pay the resulting inflated property taxes. For the past 150 years, all over the country, the same story has played out, with African Americans paying disproportionately higher property taxes, whether due to systemic inequities or corrupt local officials, while at the same time receiving dramatically fewer public services. And due to a Depression-Era law, aimed at limiting the tax bargaining powers of large property owners, Black Americans have been unable to seek redress against discriminatory property tax assessments in the US Supreme Court. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Andrew W. Kahrl, Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Virginia, and author of The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Baby won't you please come home blues,” written by Charles Warfield and performed by Bessie Smith on April 11, 1923, in New York; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a sign in Harlingen, Texas, photographed in 1939, by Lee Russell; available via the The New York Public Library on Unsplash; free to use under the Unsplash License.

Additional Sources:

• “How do state and local property taxes work?” The Tax Policy Briefing Book.
• “History of Property Taxes in the United States,” by Glenn W. Fisher, Economics History Association.
• “America Used to Have a Wealth Tax: The Forgotten History of the General Property Tax,” by Carl Davis and Eli Byerly-Duke, ITEP, November 2, 2023.
• “It’s Time to End the Quiet Cruelty of Property Taxes,” by Andrew W. Kahrl, The New York Times, April 11, 2024.
• “Prop 13 and Inequality: How the 1978 Tax Reform Law Drives Economic and Racial Disparities” by Jonathan Vankin, California Local, November 29, 2022.
• “The Lock-in Effect of California’s Proposition 13,” By Les Picker, The NBER Digest, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2005.
• “Property tax burdens fall on nation’s lowest-income homeowners, study finds,” UChicago News, Mach 9, 2021.
• “The Assessment Gap: Racial Inequalities in Property Taxation,” by Carlos Avenancio-León and Troup Howard, The Washington Center for Equitable Growth, June 10, 2020.

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For Ericka Huggins, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which she attended at just 15 years old, was a turning point in her life, inspiring her toward activism. She later joined the Black Panther Party, and after being incarcerated as a political prisoner, served as Director of the acclaimed Oakland Community School and became both the first Black person and the first woman appointed to the Alameda County Board of Education. She continues her activism work today in the fields of restorative justice and social change. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Mary Frances Phillips, Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and author of Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is Vinyl Funk by Alisia from Pixabay, free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Ericka Huggins at Occupy Oakland Protest on November 2, 2011,” by Clay@SU on Flickr, CC by 2.0.

Additional Sources:

• “Ericka Huggins”
• “Hggins, Ericka,” Archives at Yale.
• “Ericka Huggins (January 5, 1948),” National Archives.
• “The 1963 March on Washington,” NAACP.
• “How the Black Power Movement Influenced the Civil Rights Movement,” by Sarah Pruitt, History.com, Originally posted February 20, 2020, and updated July 27, 2023.
• “Black Panther Party,” National Archives.
• “The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change,” Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
• “(1966) The Black Panther Party Ten-Point Program,” BlackPast.
• “Black Panthers’ Oakland Community School: A Model for Liberation,” by Shani Ealey, Staff Writer, Black Organizing Project, November 3, 2016.
• “Black Panthers ran a first-of-its-kind Oakland school. Now it’s a beacon for schools in California,” By Ida Mojadad, The San Francisco Standard, August 7, 2023.

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Thousands of years ago, a band of Cahuilla Indians migrated south into the Coachella Valley, calling the area Séc-he, meaning boiling water. The Mexicans translated this as agua caliente (hot water), which is the name still used today. As the United States extended its territory into California, the Agua Caliente were forced onto a reservation, and then, as the Southern Pacific Railroad was granted land in the region, the reservation was carved up into a checkerboard pattern. It took decades of legal fights and government intervention, but today Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians continues its work to retain its cultural heritage and stewards more than 34,000 acres of ancestral land. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Michael Albertus, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and author of Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Dramatic Nostalgic Sad Piano and Cello” by Yevhen Onoychenko from Pixabay; it is free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is the Agua Caliente Reservation; this media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 298622.

Additional Sources

• Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.
• “Dawes Act,” National Archives.
• “S.555 - Indian Gaming Regulatory Act,” 100th Congress (1987-1988).
• “Cahuilla,” UNESCO World Atlas of Languages.
• “Keeping Cahuilla Alive,” by Joan Page McKenna, me yah whae, Spring/Summer 2019.
• Agua Caliente Cultural Museum
• “Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza, Palm Springs, Calif.,” by Kate Nelson, Time Magazine, July 25, 2024.

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In 1865, when Black people in Mississippi first gained the legal right to marriage, so-called Black Codes outlawed interracial marriage, punishable by life in prison. Five years later, Republicans in the Mississippi state legislature repealed the Black Codes and legalized interracial marriage, but the law was reversed again ten years later when Democrats took control. In 1890, a new state Constitution, erasing all the racial progress of the 1868 one, enshrined a prohibition on interracial marriage that lasted until the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia. Through it all, though, interracial couples in Mississippi formed lasting unions, started families, and in some cases even legally wed, despite the legal constraints against them. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Kathryn Schumaker, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, and author of Tangled Fortunes

The Hidden History of Interracial Marriage in the Segregated South.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Mississippi Moon,” written and performed by Gus Van and Joe Schenck; this recording was created in New York on January 3, 1923 and is in the public domain; it is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode artwork is a photo by Monet Garner on Unsplash and is free to use under the Unsplash License.

Additional Sources:

• “‘Unlawful Intimacy’: Mixed-Race Families, Miscegenation Law, and the Legal Culture of Progressive Era Mississippi.” by Kathryn Schumaker, 2023. Law and History Review 41(4): 773–94. doi: 10.1017/S0738248023000317.
• “Mississippi Miscegenation Laws,” Facing History and Ourselves.
• “Civil Rights Act of 1866, ‘An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their Vindication,’” National Constitution Center.
• Miss. Code Ann. § 97-29-1 Adultery and fornication; unlawful cohabitation.
• “Mississippi Rises Again,” by Don Winbush, Time Magazine, November 16, 1987.

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The completion of the Panama Canal in 1914 positioned the United States as a global power, but the U.S. didn’t complete the feat single-handedly. It required land from Panama, equipment and information from the failed earlier effort by the French, and, importantly, tens of thousands of laborers from around the Caribbean. Decades later the Panamanians finally gained control of the canal zone and then the canal itself, but the labor – and sacrifice – of the Afro-Caribbean workers still deserves greater recognition. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Julie Greene, Professor of History at the University of Maryland, and author of Box 25: Archival Secrets, Caribbean Workers, and the Panama Canal.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Through the Panama Canal,” composed by J. Louis Von der Mehden and performed by Prince’s Band on January 7, 1914, in New York; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Panama Canal,” photographed by Harris & Ewing in 1913; the image is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Additional Sources:

• “The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal,” by Julie Greene, Penguin Publishing Group, 2010.
• “Building the Panama Canal, 1903–1914,” Office of the Historian, US Department of State.
• “Panama Canal: Topics in Chronicling America,” Library of Congress.
• “History,” Panama Canal Authority.
• “Chief Engineers of the Panama Canal,” PBS American Experience.
• “How the Panama Canal Took a Huge Toll On the Contract Workers Who Built It,” by Caroline Lieffers, The Conversation, April 18, 2018.
• “Why the Construction of the Panama Canal Was So Difficult—and Deadly,” by Christopher Klein, History.com, Originally published October 25, 2021, and updated September 15, 2023.
• “The Panama Canal: The African American Experience,” by Patrice C. Brown, Federal Records and African American History (Summer 1997, Vol. 29, No. 2).
• “Panama Canal Centennial online exhibition,” University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries.
• “The Panama Canal and the Torrijos-Carter Treaties,”Office of the Historian, US Department of State.

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In 1686, Susannah Mingo, Elizabeth Atkins, Dorothy Spendlove, and their children, all of whom were half-siblings, along with some of their children's other half-siblings and their children's father, boarded a ship headed from Barbados to England, where they would live out their lives. It wasn’t unusual for a plantation owner like John Peers to impregnate both his enslaved Black laborers and his white servant, but it was unusual for him to acknowledge his illegitimate offspring, baptize them, bring them and their mothers with him across the ocean, and provide for them in his will, all of which John Peers did. This week we look at the story of a Barbados family, not via its patriarch, but rather through the lives of the five women who bore his children – Susannah, Elizabeth, Dorothy, and John's wives, Hester Tomkyns and Frances Knights (née Atkins). Joining me in this episode is Dr. Jenny Shaw, Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama, and author of The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode music is “Calypso Island - P5,” by Audio Beats, purchased under Pond5's Content License Agreement; the Pond5 license authorizes the licensee to use the media in the licensee's own commercial or non-commercial production and to copy, broadcast, distribute, display, perform and monetize the production or work in any medium. The episode image is “A representation of the sugar-cane and the art of making sugar,” by John Hinton, 1749; the engraving is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540.

Additional Sources:

• “On Barbados, the First Black Slave Society,” by Sir Hilary Beckles, Black Perspectives, African American Intellectual History Society, April 8, 2017.
• “Barbados profile - Timeline,” BBC News, January 4, 2018.
• “Barbados: Local History & Genealogy Resource Guide,” Library of Congress.
• “Barbados parts way with Queen and becomes world’s newest republic,” by Michael Safi, The Guardian, November 30, 2021.
• “Inside Barbados’ Historic Push for Slavery Reparations,” by Janell Ross, Time Magazine, July 6, 2023.

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Henry Christophe, one of the heroes of the Haitian Revolution, was, from 1811 to his death in 1820, King Henry I of the Kingdom of Haiti, the first, last, and only King that Haiti ever had. This week we look at Christophe’s meteoric rise from being born enslaved on an island hundreds of miles from Haiti to fighting in the American Revolution to serving as a general in the Haitian Revolution to being king of all he surveyed, until it all came crashing down around him. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Marlene Daut, Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University and author of The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Maestro Walter's Brass Band, Final March - JEZI OU KONNEN,” by Félix Blume, from Death in Haiti; the audio is available under Creative Commons CC BY 3.0. The episode image is a portrait of Henry Christophe from 1816 by Richard Evans; the painting is in the Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “The Haitian Revolution Timeline,” by Kona Shen at Brown University, 2022.
• “The United States and the Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804,” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State.
• “How Toussaint L’ouverture Rose from Slavery to Lead the Haitian Revolution,” by Kedon Willis, History.com, Originally posted August 30, 2021, and updated, August 18, 2023.
• “Inside the Kingdom of Haiti, ‘the Wakanda of the Western Hemisphere,’” by Marlene Daut, The Conversation, Originally published January 23, 2019, and update November 16, 2022.
• “Rare document sheds light on historical black queen,” The University of Central Lancashire, September 26, 2019.
• “Atlantic freedoms: Haiti, not the US or France, was where the assertion of human rights reached its defining climax in the Age of Revolution,” by Laurent Dubois, AEON, November 7, 2016.
• “The Play That Electrified Harlem,” by Wendy Smith, Library of Congress.

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If you were to head to Paris in the mid-eighteenth Century and ask for a restaurant, you might be handed a bowl of meat bouillon, prepared in such a way as to improve vigor and perhaps even sperm production. Restaurant referred first to the broth itself and then to the eateries in which men, and less frequently women, could eat said broth. As restaurant came to mean the luxurious establishment at one which could eat an elaborate menu of delicate food items prepared by talented chefs, sex stayed the menu, and restaurants and the city’s sex workers formed a mutually beneficial relationship to serve diners’ appetites. Even as restaurants jumped across the pond to the US, the correlation remained. As a word of warning, this episode may not be appropriate for younger ears. Joining this episode is Dr. Rachel Hope Cleves, Professor of History at the University of Victoria and author of Lustful Appetites: An Intimate History of Good Food and Wicked Sex.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Sugar Blues,” composed by Clarence Williams with lyrics by Lucy Fletcher; this performance is by Leonare Williams and her Dixie Band, recorded on August 10, 1922, in New York City; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress. National Jukebox. The episode image is a digitized image from "Tableaux de Paris ... Paris qui consomme. Dessins de P. Vidal," published in Paris in 1893.; the digital version is available via the British Library and is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

• “When Did People Start Eating in Restaurants?” by Dave Roos, History.com, Originally published May 18, 2020, and updated August 20, 2023.
• “Revolutionary broth: the birth of the restaurant and the invention of French gastronomy,” by Joel Abrams, The Conversation, August 25, 2021.
• “Are Oysters an Aphrodisiac?” by Alicia Ault, Smithsonian Magazine, February 13, 2017.
• “Looking to Quell Sexual Urges? Consider the Graham Cracker,” by Adee Braun, The Atlantic, January 15, 2014.
• “Segregating Restaurants,” by Kimberly Wilmot Voss, PhD, NY Food Story.
• “The Ornate Ice Cream Saloons That Served Unchaperoned Women,” by Jessica Gingrich, Atlas Obscura, June 22, 2018
• “History,” The Berghoff.
• “8 Restaurants And Bars Where U.S. History Was Made,” by Mercedes Kane, The Takeout, June 22, 2022.
• “National Statistics,” National Restaurant Association.
• “A restaurant wanting a ‘grown and sexy’ vibe bans diners under 30,” by Emily Heil, The Washington Post, June 10, 2024.

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On March 4, 1933, Frances Perkins was sworn in as the 4th Secretary of Labor. It was the first time in United States history that a woman served in the Cabinet, only 13 years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Perkins came into office with a long list of to-do items, and she succeeded in accomplishing nearly all of them in her long tenure, as a central architect of many of the programs of the New Deal, especially the Social Security Act. More quietly, but no less importantly, Perkins also worked to institute more humane policies around immigration, especially as the rise of Nazism in Europe created a refugee crisis of Jews attempting to flee to the US. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham, a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University and author of Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins: Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The additional audio is from a radio address of America’s Town Meeting of the Air from December 19, 1935, titled “Should We Plan for Social Security,” in which Frances Perkins defends the new legislation; the audio is available on the Social Security Administration website, and there is no known copyright. The mid-episode music is “Minimal Piano” by Sakartvelo from Pixabay, free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is Frances Perkins, c. 1935-1936. Courtesy Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections

Additional Sources:

• “Who Was Frances Perkins? Meet the Trailblazing Workers’ Rights Advocate Whose Homestead Just Became a National Monument,” by Sarah Kuta, The Smithsonian Magazine, December 19, 2024.
• “The Woman Behind the New Deal,” The Frances Perkins Center.
• “Frances Perkins,” Social Security History, the Social Security Administration.
• “Frances Perkins became the First Female Cabinet Member,” Library of Congress.
• “Frances Perkins: Breaking Glass Ceilings in the Cabinet,” by Rebecca Brenner Graham, The White House Historical Association.
• “Frances Perkins,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.
• “A Proclamation on the Establishment of the Frances Perkins National Monument,” The White House, December 16, 2024.

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On June 15, 1933, the all-white, all-male Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed Florence Price’s award-winning Symphony Number 1 in E minor, the first institution of its caliber to play the work of a Black woman composer. It was a monumental achievement, but not one that Price achieved alone. She was supported by a sisterhood of Black women who created an environment in Chicago in which composers and performers like Price and Margaret Bonds could find success. Joining me in this episode is musicologist and concert pianist Dr. Samantha Ege, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton and author of South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago's Classical Music Scene.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is Dr. Samantha Ege performing Nora Holt’s Negro Dance, composed in 1921; the composition is in the public domain, and the recording is used with the permission of Dr. Ege. The episode image is a portrait of Florence Price, circa 1940, taken by George Nelidoff; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

• “Now Hear This ‘Florence Price and the American Migration’ [video],” PBS with host Scott Yoo, April 15, 2022.
• “About Florence,” International Florence Price Festival.
• “How Women of the Chicago Black Renaissance Changed Classical Music Around the World,” by Stephen Raskauskas, WFMT, April 10, 2018.
• “The Curious Case of ‘Naughty Little Nora,’ a Jazz Age Shape Shifter,” By Samantha Ege, The New York Times, November 12, 2024.
• “Nora Holt: The Most Famous Woman You've Never Heard of,” by Imani Perry, The Atlantic, December 1, 2021.
• “Maude Roberts George facts for kids,” Kiddle Encyclopedia.
• “A trailblazing Black, female composer’s work is revived by Opera Philadelphia,” by Peter Crimmins, WHYY, January 31, 2023.
• “Margaret Bonds: Composer and Activist,” Georgetown University Library Booth Family Center for Special Collections.
• “History of NANM,” National Association of Negro Musicians.
• “125 Moments: 072 Price’s Symphony in E Minor,” Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
• “The Rediscovery of Florence Price: How an African-American composer’s works were saved from destruction,” by Alex Ross, The New Yorker, January 29, 2018.
• “The Chicago Black Renaissance is Harlem’s radical counterpart,” by Crystal Hill, The TRiiBE, February 10, 2022.

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As the Nazis rose to power in Germany, life became increasingly hostile for women scientists, especially women of Jewish descent, but also those who expressed anti-Nazi sentiments. The sexism in academic that had held them back in their careers also made escape from Germany difficult, as they didn’t look as strong on paper as their male counterparts. But four women physicists – Hertha Sponer, Hildegard Stücklen, Hedwig Kohn, and Lise Meitner – managed to flee, taking their scientific knowledge and rugged determination with them to the United States and Sweden. Joining me in this episode is writer Olivia Campbell, author of the forthcoming book, Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Classical Piano (Sad & Emotional)” by Clavier Clavier from Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Hedwig Kohn in her laboratory, 1912;” the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Timeline of the Holocaust: 1933-1945,” Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles.
• “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service,” Holocaust Encyclopedia.
• “Albert Einstein’s Little-Known Correspondence with W.E.B. Du Bois About Equality and Racial Justice,” by Maria Popova, The Marginalian.
• “Hertha Sponer,” Duke University Department of Physics.
• “Dr. Slucklen Retires In September,” Sweet Briar News, Volume 29, Number 24, 16 May 1956.
• “Hedwig Kohn, April 5, 1887–1964,” by Brenda P. Winnewisser, Jewish Women’s Archive.
• “Interview of Hedwig Kohn by Thomas S. Kuhn on 1962 June 7,” Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics,College Park, MD, USA.
• “Google Honors Pioneering Physicist Hedwig Kohn Who Fled Nazi Germany,” by Madeline Roache, Time Magazine, April 5, 2019.
• “Lise Meitner,” Atomic Heritage Foundation.
• “Lise Meitner – the forgotten woman of nuclear physics who deserved a Nobel Prize,” by Timothy J. Jorgensen, The Conversation, February 7, 2019.
• “Why the ‘Mother of the Atomic Bomb’ Never Won a Nobel Prize,” by Katrina Miller, The New York Times, Originally published October 2, 2023, and updated November 8, 2023.

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As the federal workforce grew during the Civil War, department heads began employing women, without any explicit authorization from Congress that they could do so. When Congress finally acknowledged the employment of women in federal departments in 1864, it set their salary at $600 a year, half of what the lowest-paid men clerks were making. Surprisingly, though, a few years later Congress debated – and nearly passed – a resolution requiring equal pay for women employed by the federal government, something that wouldn’t become law for nearly another century. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Jessica Ziparo McHugh, author of This Grand Experiment: When Women Entered the Federal Workforce in Civil War-Era Washington, D.C.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is “I Love the Ladies,” composed by Jean Schwartz, with lyrics by Grant Clarke, and performed by William J. Halley on May 18, 1914, in Camden, New Jersey; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Among the Greenbacks – The Cutting and Separating Room the Treasury Building – Washington,” from Ten Years in Washington: Life and Scenes in the National Capitol, as a Woman Sees Them, by Mary Clemmer Ames, 1873.

Additional Sources:

• “History: A legacy of service to the Nation since 1861,” The U.S. Government Publishing Office.
• “History of the Treasury,” U.S. Department of the Treasury.
• “Behind the Scenes in Washington: Being a Complete and Graphic Account of the Credit Mobilier Investigation, the Congressional Rings, Political Intrigues, Workings of the Lobbies, Etc. ... with Sketches of the Leading Senators, Congressmen, Government Officials, Etc., and an Accurate Description of the Splendid Public Buildings of the Federal Capital,” by James Dabney McCabe, Continental Publishing Company, 1873.
• “Gendered Merit: Women and the Merit Concept in Federal Employment, 1864-1944,” by Cathryn L. Claussen, 40 Am. J. Legal Hist. 229 (1996).
• “FACT SHEET: On Equal Pay Day, the Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Actions to Continue Advancing Pay Equity and Women’s Economic Security,” The White House, March 12, 2024.

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Plantation owners in the Southern United States regularly furnished their enslaved workers with goods – clothing, shoes, axes, and shovels, that had been manufactured in the North. Many Northern manufacturers specifically targeted the Southern plantation market, enticed by the prospect of selling cheap goods on a regular schedule. While in some cases the Northern manufacturers supported surprising politics – joining the Republican Party and donating to Abolitionist causes – they had no qualms about making their money in an industry adjacent to the slave economy. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Seth Rockman, Associate Professor of History at Brown University and author of Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Relaxing Enchanted Piano” by Mikhail Smusev from Pixabay and is used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Brogans, Manufacturer Little & Co., third quarter 19th century,” Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Herman Delman, 1955; image is in the public domain.

Additional sources:

• “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation,” by Matthew Desmond, The New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2019.
• “Industrialization and Conflict in America: 1840–1875,” by David Jaffee, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.
• “8. The Market Revolution,” The American Yawp.
• “Industry and Economy during the Civil War,” by Benjamin T. Arrington, National Park Service.
• “In search of slave clothes: A museum director’s hunt for a painful symbol,” by J. Freedom du Lac, The Washington Post, January 20, 2012.
• “Antebellum Tariff Politics: Regional Coalitions and Shifting Economic Interests,” by Douglas A. Irwin, The Journal of Law & Economics 51, no. 4 (2008): 715–41.

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In 1879, a group of Spiritualists purchased 20 acres of land, halfway between Buffalo, New York, and Erie, Pennsylvania. The gated community they created, now a hamlet of Pomfret, New York, became known as Lily Dale. Each summer, people came to Lily Dale (and still come) to speak with the dead through Lily Dale’s many licensed mediums. In its early years, modern Spiritualism, which began with the young Fox sisters (Maggie and Kate), often intersected with Women’s Suffrage, and suffragists like Susan B. Anthony were frequent visitors to Lily Dale. Joining me in this episode to help us understand more about Lily Dale and Spiritualism more generally is Dr. Averill Earls, Assistant Professor of History at St. Olaf College, Executive Producer of Dig: A History Podcast, and one of the authors of Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Séances in Lily Dale.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Night Whisper,” by by Sergio Prosvirini, Free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a photograph of “The Lily Dale Museum,” by Plazak, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• Lily Dale Assembly
• “In Good Spirits: Lily dale, New York, is a curious little village where the still-quick commune with the once-quick,” by Bil Gilbert, Smithsonian Magazine, May 31, 2001.
• “Lily Dale, the Town That Speaks to the Dead,” by Bess Lovejoy, Mental Floss, August 26, 2015.
• “This Community Welcomes Mediums, but First You Have to Prove Yourself,” By Anna Kodé, The New York Times, October 27, 2023.
• “The Art of Belief: On Talking to the Dead in Lily Dale,” by Laura Maylene Walter, LitHib, March 23, 2021.
• “In the Joints of Their Toes,” by Edward White, The Paris Review, November 4, 2016.
• “The Mystery of the Three Fox Sisters,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, Psychic Science, October 1922.
• “The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism,” by Abbott Kahler, Smithsonian Magazine, October 30, 2012.
• National Spiritualist Association of Churches.

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Isabel Truesdell Kelly earned her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932, with a dissertation on the “Fundamentals of Great Basin Culture,” having researched the Northern Paiute and Coast Miwok Indigenous cultures of Northern California. After graduating she led excavations in Mexico and then began a career as an anthropologist with the US State Department, which had a growing interest in assisting the scientific and technological development of countries like Mexico as a way of maintaining a toehold in the region during the growing cold war with the Soviet Union. Joining me this week is Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman, Professor of History at Georgia College, and author of Cold War Anthropologist: Isabel Kelly and Rural Development in Mexico.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Hermoso Mexico,” composed by R. Herrera, arranged and conducted by Guillermo González and performed by Banda González (Victor Band) on May 16, 1919, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Isabel T. Kelly portrait,” DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

Additional Sources:

• “Isabel T. Kelly Ethnographic Archive,” Southern Methodist University (SMU) Libraries.
• “Isabel Truesdell Kelly,” The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
• “Isabel T. Kelly's Southern Paiute Ethnographic Field Notes, 1932-1934, Las Vegas,” compiled and edited by Catherine S. Fowler and Darla Garey-Sage, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.
• “Isabel T. Kelly: Pioneer Great Basin Ethnographer,” by Catherine S. Fowler, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 36, no. 1 (2016): 172–76..
• “With Grit and Determination: A Century of Change for Women in Great Basin and American Archaeology,” by Nicole M. Herzog and Suzanne Eskenazi, University of Utah Press, 2020.

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At the end of August 1787, after three long months of debate and deliberation, the Constitutional Convention had neared the end of its work. They were poised at that time to write into the Constitution that the President of the United States would be elected by the legislature, but at the last minute they referred the matter to the Committee on Unfinished Parts to resolve. It was that committee, guided by future president James Madison, that drafted a compromise Electors plan, answering the concerns of the small states and slave states who wanted to keep the advantages they held in the legislature but also, theoretically at least, avoiding the corruption likely in a system where the legislative branch chooses the chief executive. Of course, it didn’t take long for political actors – including some of the founders themselves – to find ways to exploit the system of Electors for their own ends. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Carolyn Renee Dupont, professor in history at Eastern Kentucky University and author of Distorting Democracy: The Forgotten History of the Electoral College--And Why It Matters Today.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Three Little Drummers from the George Washington Show,” by The United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps,” performed by the United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps on April 11, 2011; the audio is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication and is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode artwork is “Signing of the United States Constitution with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton (left to right in the foreground),” painting by Howard Chandler Christy; image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Constitutional Convention and Ratification, 1787–1789,” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State.
• “Electoral College History,” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
• “Article II Executive Branch,” National Constitution Center.
• “12th Amendment: Election of President and Vice President,” National Constitution Center.
• “10 reasons why America’s first constitution failed,” by NCC Staff, National Constitution Center, November 17, 2022.
• “Why Was the Electoral College Created?” by Dave Roos, History.com, Originally posted July 15, 2019, and updated October 7, 2024.
• “How the Electoral College Became Winner-Take-All,” by Devin Mccarthy, Fair Vote, August 21, 2012.
• “Letter from James Madison to George Hay explaining views on Electoral College,” August 23, 1823.
• “Federalist No. 68,” Federalist Papers: Primary Documents in American History, Library of Congress.

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In the 1870s, 120 Chinese boys came to New England as part of the Chinese Educational Mission. The boys studied at prep schools and colleges, and while they continued their lessons in Chinese language and culture, they also learned about the culture of their adopted homeland, including the local sports, like baseball. By the mid-1870s, some of the Chinese students had formed a semi-pro baseball team called the Celestials that competed on the regional circuit. With growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the US, though, the Chinese government recalled the students. On their trip home, the Celestials had one last chance to play as a team, when an Oakland, California, team, challenged them to a game. This week I’m joined by Dr. Ben Railton, Professor of American Studies at Fitchburg State University and host of The Celestials’ Last Game: Baseball, Bigotry, and the Battle for America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” composed by Albert Von Tilzer, and recorded by Edward Meeker in September 1908; the recording is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is “The baseball players of the Chinese Education Mission,” from 1878, via the Thomas La Fargue Papers, MASC, Washington State University Libraries; the image is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

• “The Burlingame-Seward Treaty, 1868,” Office of the Historian, United States of America Department of State.
• “Considering History: Baseball, Chinese Americans, and the Worst and Best of America,” by Ben Railton, The Saturday Evening Post, May 11, 2020.
• “Yung Wing, the Chinese Educational Mission, and Transnational Connecticut,” by Ben Railton, Connecticut History, May 1, 2022.
• “Yung Wing’s Dream: The Chinese Educational Mission, 1872-1881,” by Barbara Austen, Connecticut History, October 26, 2021.
• “My Life in China and America,” by Yung Wing, via Project Gutenberg
• CEM Connections.
• “Chinese Educational Mission at MIT,” from an 2017 exhibit at MIT's Maihaugen Gallery.
• “Journeys 旅途: Boys of the Chinese Educational Mission,” Connecticut Museum of Culture and History.
• “Historical Context /历史背景/歷史背景: The Chinese Educational Mission (1872-1881),” Phillips Andover Academy.
• “Chinese Educational Mission, 1870s-1880s,” Phillips Exeter Academy.
• “The Workingmen’s Party & The Denis Kearney Agitation: Historical Essay,” by Chris Carlsson, FoundSF, 1995.
• “140 years ago, San Francisco was set ablaze during the city's deadliest race riots,” by Katie Dowd, SF Gate, July 23, 2017.
• “Chinese Exclusion Act (1882),” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

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Shortly after he was born in 1971, Ryan White was diagnosed with severe hemophilia. Ryan was able to reduce his hospitalizations from the disease through the use of in-home injections of Factor VIII concentrate, something he and other people with hemophilia saw as a lifeline. The downside of this lifeline was that it pooled blood and plasma from thousands of donors, increasing the user’s risk of exposure to diseases like HIV. In 1984, Ryan was diagnosed with AIDS. His fight to be allowed to attend school and live as normal a life as possible made him a household name and helped humanize the HIV/AIDS epidemic for many Americans, culminating in the passage of the Ryan White CARE Act months after Ryan’s death in 1990. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Paul Renfro, Associate Professor of History at Florida State University and author of The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is a clip from “Episode 259: Alyssa Milano,” Two Broads Talking Politics, July 23, 2019, used with permission of the original podcast. The mid-episode music is “The Beat of Nature” by folk_acoustic; the audio is free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a photo of Ryan White taken at a fundraising event in the spring of 1989 in INdianapolis, Indiana; it is available via Wikimedia Commons and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Additional sources:

• “Who Was Ryan White?” The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, Health Resources & Services Administration.
• “Remembering Ryan White, the teen who fought against the stigma of AIDS,” by Dr. Howard Markel, PBS Health, April 8, 2016.
• “Ryan White, Teen Who Contracted AIDS, Shifted Narrative Around the Disease,” By Paul Renfro, Teen Vogue, December 6, 2021.
• “Elton John credits Ryan White’s family with saving his life,” by Associated Press, PBS, April 3, 2022.
• “S.2240 - Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990,” 101st Congress (1989-1990), Congress.gov.
• “Celebrating 30 Years of the Ryan White CARE Act,” HIV.gov, August 18, 2020.
• “U.S. Statistics,” HIV.gov.

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When she was just fifteen years old, in 1830, Sarah Martha Sanders was sold to Richard Walpole Cogdell of Charleston, South Carolina. Within a year she was pregnant with his child, and just after she turned 17, Sarah Martha gave birth to Robert Sanders, the first of nine children she would bear to then 45-year-old Richard Cogdell. Because the legal status of the children followed that of the mother, these nine children were also Richard’s property. None of this was unusual for the time. The unusual turn happened in 1857 when Richard Cogdell, for unknown reasons, purchased a property in Philadelphia and immediately signed it over to his five living children with Sarah Martha, immediately moving there with them for good. Joining me to discuss this story is Dr. Lori Ginzberg, Professor Emeritus of History and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author of Tangled Journeys: One Family's Story and the Making of American History.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Cordelia Sanders (1841-1879), age 15, Charleston,” P.2014.51.2, Stevens-Cogdell-Sanders-Venning-Chew Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia. The mid-episode music is “Satisfied Blues,” composed and performed by Lemuel Fowler, recorded in New York City on July 19, 1923; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox.

Additional Sources:

• Stevens-Cogdell-Sanders-Venning-Chew Collection, Library Company of Philadelphia.
• “Tracing Charleston’s History of Slavery, From a Burial Ground to a DNA Swab,” by Caroline Gutman and Emily Cochrane, The New York Times, April 11, 2024.
• “Old Slave Mart,” Charleston, South Carolina, National Park Service.
• “The Charleston Slave Badges,” National Museum of African American History & Culture.
• “Telling the complicated history of Charleston, South Carolina,” CBS News,” February 24, 2020.
• “Abolitionism,” by Richard S. Newman, The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.
• “Philadelphia and the Birth of the Nation’s First Abolitionist Society,” by Fidan Baycora, Historic America, April 14, 2021.
• “First American abolition society founded in Philadelphia,” History.com.
• “Big Idea 5: The Forten Family: Abolitionists and Reformers,” Museum of the American Revolution.

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At the dedication for a school for African American students in Manassas, Virginia, in 1894, Frederick Douglass said: “no greater benefit can be bestowed upon a long benighted people, than giving to them, as we are here earnestly this day endeavoring to do, the means of an education.” In the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South, and especially in the Washington, DC, region, formerly enslaved people fought for educational opportunities. Even as other advances of Reconstruction were clawed back by the forces of white supremacy by the late 19th century, much of the educational progress remained, so that Douglass in 1894 could still see “encouraging signs in the moral skies.” I’m joined in this episode by my son Teddy as co-host and by Dr. Kate Masur, the Board of Visitors Professor of History at Northwestern University and author of Freedom Was in Sight: A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington, D.C., Region.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “I Want to Be Ready,” performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and recorded in New York City on December 22, 1920; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photograph from 1864 of the Jacobs Free School, founded by Harriet Jacobs; the photograph was distributed to Northern abolitionists who had helped fund the school and is now in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “The Blessings of Liberty and Education,” by Frederick Douglass, delivered in Manassas, Virginia, on September 3, 1894, The Frederick Douglass Papers Project.
• “How Literacy Became a Powerful Weapon in the Fight to End Slavery,” by Colette Coleman, History.com, Originally posted on June 17, 2020, and updated on July 11, 2023.
• “An Act to amend the act concerning slaves, free negroes and mulattoes (April 7, 1831),” Encyclopedia of Virginia.
• “Margaret Douglass,” Shaping the Constitution, Resources from the Library of Virginia and the Library of Congress.
• “Harriet Jacobs: Working for Freedpeople in Civil War Alexandria,” by Paula Tarnapol Whitacre, Journal of the Civil War Era, July 16, 2019.
• “Letter from Teachers of the Freedmen,” by Harriet A. Jacobs and Louisa Jacobs, National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 16, 1864, in Documenting the American South.
• “Lost Capitol Hill: The Little Ebenezer Church School,” by Robert Pohl, The Hill is Home, February 9, 2015.
• “The Freedmen's Bureau,” National Archives.
• “History,” Howard University.
• “General Oliver Otis Howard House,” National Park Service.
• “Jennie Dean and the Manassas Industrial School,” Manassas Museum.

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In his bestselling childcare manual American pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock advised new moms:“If you begin to feel at all depressed, go to a movie, or to the beauty parlor, or to get yourself a new hat or dress.” Although puerperal insanity had been a recognized diagnosis at the end of the 19th Century, doctors in the early 20th century dismissed the postpartum onset of psychiatric symptoms as “pure coincidence.” It would take decades of activism by both parent groups and clinicians for the effects of postpartum depression, anxiety, and psychosis to be recognized and studied, with limited federal funding for programming finally being approved in late 2016. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Rachel Louise Moran, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Texas and author of Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Alone with the Darkness,” by NaturesEye; the music is available via the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Additional Sources:

• The International Marcé Society for Perinatal Mental Health
• Postpartum Support International
• “Postpartum Depression Support Groups in the U.S. & Canada,” Postpartum Progress.
• “Perinatal Depression,” National Institute for Mental Health.
• “Shedding More Light on Postpartum Depression,” by Rachel Ewing, Penn Medicine News, January 4, 2016.
• “New treatment for postpartum depression offers hope, but the stigma attached to the condition still lingers,” by Nicole Lynch and Shannon Pickett, The Conversation, October 19, 2023.
• “The Neurobiology of Postpartum Anxiety and Depression,” by Jodi S Pawluski, Joseph S Lonstein, and Alison S Fleming, Trends in Neurosciences, 2017, 40 (2), pp.106-120. ff10.1016/j.tins.2016.11.009ff. Ffhal01452985f.
• “Exploring predictors and prevalence of postpartum depression among mothers: Multinational study,” by Amer, S.A., Zaitoun, N.A., Abdelsalam, H.A. et al., BMC Public Health 24, 1308 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18502-0.
• “Federal Legislative History,” Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance (MMHLA).

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Between 1921 and 1948, every Southern and border state, except Delaware, set up scholarship programs to send Black students out of state for graduate study rather than admit them to historically white public colleges or build graduate programs in the public HBCUs. While the individual Black students often benefited from graduate education at top-tier universities, the segregation scholarships created hardships for those same students and took money that could have been used to build up the public HBCUs. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Crystal R. Sanders, Associate Professor of African American Studies, at Emory University and author of A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “He’s a College Boy,” composed by Theodore F. Morse, with lyrics by Jack Mahoney, and performed by the American Quartet on September 3, 1910, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “As University of Oklahoma dean of admissions J.E. Fellows, Thurgood Marshall, ad Amos T. Hall look on, Ada Sipuel again applies for admission to the University of Oklahoma Law School in 1948;” Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Additional Sources:

• “Segregation Scholarships,” PBS Chasing the Dream.
• “Major Landmarks in the Progress of African Americans in Higher Education,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
• “History of HBCUs,” Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
• “Reconstruction-Era Politics Shaped Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” by Leigh Soares, Progress: A Blog for American History.
• “STATE OF MISSOURI et rel. GAINES v. CANADA et al.,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School.
• “Fisher, Ada Lois Sipuel (1924-1995),” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Oklahoma State HIstorical Society.
• “4 decades of desegregation in American colleges, charted,” by Jeff Guo, The Washington Post, December 17, 2014.

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In 1946, the National Football League began the process of reintegration after a “gentleman’s agreement” had stopped teams from hiring Black players for over a decade. Even as the NFL began to re-integrate, though, racist stereotypes kept teams from drafting Black players into so-called “thinking” positions like quarterback. Black players who started at quarterback in college would be drafted into the NFL, only to be converted into running backs or wide receivers. On September 30, 1979, for the first time in NFL history, two Black quarterbacks (Doug WIlliams of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Vince Evans of the Chicago Bear) faced off against each other. In this episode, we look at Williams, Evans, and the history of Black quarterbacks in the NFL. I’m joined in this episode by historian Dr. Louis Moore, Professor of History at Grand Valley State University and author of The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “American Football Game (Drum Corps Percussion Action) Bumper,” by FlorewsMusic, used under the Pond5's Content License Agreement. The episode image is “Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams preparing to throw the ball during an offensive play in 1987,” published in 1988 for the Redskins Police football card set; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “NFL founded in Canton on Sept. 17, 1920,” Pro Football Hall of Fame.
• “The Reintegration of the NFL,” NFL Football Operations.
• “How the media helped overturn the NFL’s unwritten ban on black players,” by Nathan Fenno, Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2017.
• “Meet Four Men Who Broke The NFL's Color Line,” NFL Players Association.
• “Bucs Edge Bears,” by Dave Brady, The Washington Post, September 30, 1979.
• “Doug Williams,” Washington Commanders.
• “QB Evans Made History Before Joining Raiders,” by Tom LaMarre, Sports Illustrated, June 23, 2023.
• “Why It Took So Long for Two Black Quarterbacks to Face Off in the Super Bowl,” by Robert Silverman, Rolling Stone, February 12, 2023.
• “No matter who wins, the first Super Bowl with 2 Black quarterbacks will make history,” by Becky Sullivan, NPR Morning Edition, February 8, 2023.
• “Nine Decades After NFL Banned Black Players, Super Bowl LVII Is The First To Feature Two Black Starting Quarterbacks,” National Urban League, February 3, 2023.

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In the Continental Army, one company of patriots in Charleston, South Carolina, was a majority Jewish, and at least fifteen Jewish soldiers in the Army achieved the rank of officer during the American Revolution, something unheard of in European armies at the time. Though their numbers were small (in proportion with their population in the colonies), Jewish patriots participated in the war, and in the Early Republic they insisted on their full citizenship in the new nation. I’m joined in this episode by Dr. Adam Jortner, the Goodwin Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion in the Department of History at Auburn University and author of A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Jewish Longing,” by Ashot Danielyan from Pixabay, used in accordance with the Pixabay content license. The episode image is a drawing of a colonial American couple with a Hanukkah menorah; the image is believed to be in the public domain, and the source is unknown.

Additional sources:

• “Recife,” Dutch Port Cities Project, the Global Asia initiative, New York University.
• “From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America, Timeline 1700s,” Library of Congress.
• “Total Jewish Population in the United States (1654 - Present),” Jewish Virtual Library.
• “Jews in Early America: From Inquisition to Freedom,” Touro Synagogue Foundation.
• “Men of Mordechai: Jewish Americans in the U.S. Armed Forces,” by Jessie Kratz, Pieces of History, National Archives, May 18, 2021.
• “One Jew’s Financial Support for the Revolutionary War,” The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
• “Francis Salvador, the First Jewish Member of a Legislative Assembly in American History,” by Nathan Dorn, Library of Congress Blog, May 5, 2020.
• “Washington’s Letter,” George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom.
• “The Bill of Rights: How Did it Happen?” National Archives.
• “First Amendment and Religion,” United States Courts.

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Abigail Smith Adams, wife to the second U.S. president and mother of the sixth U.S. president, may be best known for exhorting her husband to “remember the ladies” as he worked with his colleagues to form a new government, but that was just one of her many strongly-held political views. Adams, who lacked formed education and whose legal status was subsumed under that of her husband, never stopped arguing for greater educational opportunities and legal rights for women. Because of her prolific correspondence, including more than 1,100 letters between her and John, and because the care with which her descendents preserved her writing, we have an extraordinary view into the inner life of a woman who helped shape the country. Joining me in this episode is presidential historian Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky, the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library and author of Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Yankee Doodle,” performed by the United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. The episode is a painting of Abigail Adams around 1766 by Benjamin Blyth; the image is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons

Additional Sources:

• “Abigail Adams: A Life,” by Woody Holton, Atria Books, 2010.
• “Biography: Abigail Adams,” PBS American Experience.
• “Abigail Adams,” UVA Miller Center.
• “John and Abigail Adams: A Tradition Begins,” by Betty C. Monkman, White House Historical Association, Spring 2000.
• “Coverture: The Word You Probably Don't Know But Should,” by Catherine Allgor, National Women’s HIstory Museum, September 4, 2012.
• “More Power to You: Abigail Adams advocated dismantling the 'masculine system' that denied property and legal rights to married women,” by Lindsay Keiter, Colonial Williamsburg, October 2, 2020.
• “Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives.
• “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 April 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives.
• “Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, 25 February 1787,” Founders Online, National Archives.
• “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 22 March 1797,” Founders Online, National Archives.
• “Will of Abigail Adams, 18 January 1816,” Founders Online, National Archives.

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In March 1778, while he was camped at Valley Forge, Commander in Chief George Washington sent a lock of his hair to the daughter of the New Jersey Governor. It wasn’t a romantic gift; rather, Washington was responding to a common request made to celebrities of his time, similar to the autographed photo one might request today. Because hair is so long-lasting, people of the 18th and 19th centuries often collected, wore, and displayed the hair of their loved ones and the notable people they met or were inspired by. Even in the 20th century, when Jackie Kennedy took her last look at JFK’s body before the funeral, she cut a lock of his hair to keep. In this episode I look at the practices around collecting hair and making hair artwork; I’m joined by Ted Pappas, author of Combing Through the White House: Hair and Its Shocking Impact on the Politics, Private Lives, and Legacies of the Presidents.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,” composed by Stephen Collins Foster, and sung by Lambert Murphy, accompanied by an orchestra conducted by Rosario Bourdon on June 29,1922, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Child named Carl who became a soldier; with handwritten note and lock of hair in case,” United States, ca. 1856; the photograph is available via the Library of Congress, and there are no known restrictions on publication.

Additional Sources:

• “Hair! At the Library? Yes, and Lots of It,” by Neely Tucker, Library of Congress Blog, August 11, 2022.
• “Beethoven may have had lead poisoning,” by Ari Daniel, NPR All Things Considered, May 18, 2024.
• “A lock of love,” by Vicky Iglikowski-Broad, UK National Archives, June 1, 2015.
• “The Real Rules of Courtship: Dating in the Regency Era,” by Dr. Sally Holloway, PBS Masterpiece.
• “George Washington to Kitty Livingston,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
• “Hair as Historic Artifact,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
• “These Strands of Lincoln’s Locks Could Sell for Thousands of Dollars. What’s Behind the Fascination With Presidential Hair?” by Olivia Waxman, Time Magazine, August 23, 2018.
• “Why Victorians Loved Hair Relics,” By: Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, April 8, 2019.
• “Daniel Webster mourning brooch,” Massachusetts HIstorical Society.
• “Charles T. Menge's price list of ornamental hair jewelry and device work, nos. 32 and 34 John Street, New York,” Smithsonian Institution Library, 1873.
• “The Intricate Craft of Using Human Hair for Jewelry, Art, and Decoration,” by Anika Burgess, Atlas Obscura, January 12, 2018.
• “Homegrown Thread: The Art of Human Hairwork in the Gilded Age,” by Marsha Borden, Piecework Magazine, July 26, 2023.
• “The Curious Victorian Tradition of Making Art from Human Hair,” by Allison Meier, Artsy, February 13, 2018.
• “Hair Wreaths – Sentimental or Spooky?” Maine State Museum.
• “A Little Off the Top for History,” by Jerry Guo, The New York TImes, July 13, 2008.

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At the Republican National Convention in July 1964, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s name was placed in nomination for the presidency, and she received votes from 27 delegates, the first time a woman was placed in nomination at a major party’s presidential convention in the United States. It was only one of many firsts Smith would achieve in her remarkable decades-long career that included speaking out against McCathyism on the floor of the Senate in 1950 and being the first woman of Congress to break the sound barrier in 1957. Joining this episode to help us learn more about Senator Smith is Dr. Teri Finneman, Associate Professor in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas and author of Press Portrayals of Women Politicians, 1870s-2000s: From Lunatic Woodhull to Polarizing Palin.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The in-episode audio is from the 1964 Margaret Chase Smith Presidential Campaign Announcement, courtesy Northeast Historic Film Archive, available via C-SPAN. The episode image is “Senator Margaret Chase Smith, ca. 1954,” Records of the U.S. Information Agency, National Archives.

Additional Sources:

• “No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith,” by Janann Sherman, Rutgers University Press, 1999.
• “Biography,” Margaret Chase Smith Library.
• “Margaret Chase Smith; Congressional Trailblazer,” by Staff Sgt. Jarred Martinez, Mountain Home Air Force Base, August 26, 2021.
• “Women in Military Service; the Role of Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith,” by Senator Susan Collins, June 26, 2023.
• “Declaration of Conscience,” delivered by Senator Margaret Chase Smith to the United States Senate on June 1, 1950.
• “Margaret Chase Smith: Breaking the Barrier,” by Jessie Kratz, National Archives, October 15, 2020.
• “The Moment That Presaged a Maine Senator’s Downfall,” by Rachel Slade, DownEast, May 2020.
• “Margaret Chase Smith Is Dead at 97; Maine Republican Made History Twice,” by Richard Severo, The New York Times, May 30, 1995.

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Even before Democrats met in Chicago in August to choose their presidential nominee, the year 1968 had been a turbulent, and often violent, time in the United States. In Chicago, the tumult of an open convention inside the International Amphitheatre was matched by the huge anti-war protests downtown. While the Democrats inside the convention hall voted down a peace plank and nominated the incumbent vice president, despite objections, the police on the streets, given free reign by Mayor Richard J. Daley, beat and tear gassed protesters, reporters, and even passers-by. Joining me in this episode to tell the story of the 1968 DNC is Dr. Heather Hendershot, the Cardiss Collins Professor of Communication Studies and Journalism at Northwestern University and author of When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Audio in the episode is “March 31, 1968: Remarks on Decision not to Seek Re-Election,” and from “The 1968 Democratic National Convention” from the National Archives. The episode image is “Young ‘hippie’ standing in front of a row of National Guard soldiers, across the street from the Hilton Hotel at Grant Park, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, August 26, 1968,” photographed by Warren K. Leffler; there are no known restrictions on publication, and the image is available by the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Audio in the episode is “March 31, 1968: Remarks on Decision not to Seek Re-Election,” from the National Archives.

Additional Sources:

• “Remembering 1968: LBJ Surprises Nation With Announcement He Won't Seek Re-Election,” by Ron Elving, NPR Weekend Edition Sunday, March 25, 2018.
• “The 1968 Republican Convention,” by Sarah Katherine Mergel, We’re History, July 21, 2016.
• “Shoot to Kill. . . Shoot to Maim” by Christopher Chandler, Chicago Reader, April 4, 2002
• “Politics: Thousand of U.S. Troops Mobilized for Guard Duty at Democratic Convention,” by John Kifner, The New York TImes, August 25, 1968.
• “Chicago: Law and Disorder: ‘There were two Americas in Chicago, but there always are.’”
• “1968: CBS News' Dan Rather gets roughed up while trying to interview a Georgia delegate [video],” CBS News.
• “‘Violence Was Inevitable’: How 7 Key Players Remember the Chaos of 1968’s Democratic National Convention Protests,” by Olivia Waxman, Time Magazine, August 28, 2018.
• “Looking back at the 1968 Democratic National Convention,” By Lee Hudson, Politico, April 11, 2023.

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In 1926, American Sigrid Schultz became one of the first women to head a foreign bureau for a US newspaper when she was named the chief correspondent for the Berlin bureau of the Chicago Tribune. In her 26 years with the Tribune, Schultz, using her command of German and French, her knowledge of German politics and history, and her wide range of contacts, reported on the rise of Nazism and warned American readers to take Hitler seriously. Joining me in this episode to tell the story of Sigrid Schultz and her journalistic career is writer Dr. Pamela Toler, author of The Dragon From Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Over There,” composed by George M. Cohan, and performed by the Peerless Quartet, in New York City on June 13, 1917; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Journalist Sigrid Schultz,” a photo taken in 1943 and in the public domain; it is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

• “Sigrid Schultz Papers, 1835-1980,” Wisconsin Historical Society.
• “Dragon Lady: The Life of Sigrid Schultz,” Westport Museum for History and Culture.
• “Dragon Lady,” Chicago Tribune, Originally published September 11, 1988, and updated August 8, 2021.
• “Sigrid Schultz is dead; Early Berlin correspondent,” Chicago Tribune, May 17, 1980.
• “Sigrid L. Schultz, Reporter Who Covered Rise of Nazism, Is Dead; Tribune's Bureau Chief,” by George Goodman, Jr., The New York Times, May 17, 1980.
• “Newly Discovered Photos Reveal Childhood of Groundbreaking Journalist,” by Jay Shefsky, WTTW, January 16, 2020.

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When the 1934 World’s Fair in Chicago was looking for an aquatic act to complement their new underwater lights, organizers turned to physical educator Katherine Curtis, who put together a wildly popular show called the Modern Mermaids. No one could quite figure out what to call it, trying out water ballet and figure swimming until a radio announcer landed on “synchronized swimming.” Soon synchronized swimming teams were forming and competing, but while the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) quickly embraced the sport, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) resisted, with the president of the IOC sneeringly referring to the sport as aquatic vaudeville. Finally, decades after the origin of synchronized swimming, the IOC voted to include it in the 1984 games in Los Angeles. Joining me in this episode to tell this history is writer and masters synchronized swimmer Vicki Valosik, author of Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Come Take a Swim in My Ocean,” composed by Gus Edwards with Lyrics by Will Cobb; this recording was performed by the Haydn Quartet in New Jersey on June 4, 1909; it is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Swimmers,” Harris & Ewing, photographer, 1936; the image is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress.

Additional Sources:

• “History of Artistic Swimming,” USA Artistic Swimming.
• “The amazing life of Australia’s ‘million-dollar mermaid,’” by Luke Buckmaster, BBC, November 2, 2017.
• “The General Slocum Disaster of June 15, 1904,” by Valerie Wingfield, New York Public Library Archives Unit, June 13, 2011.
• “Commodore Wilbert E. Longfellow (USA),” International Swimming Hall of Fame
• “Water Pageants, Games and Stunts,” by Olive McCormick, A. S. Barnes, incorporated, 1933.
• “1933 Modern Mermaids [video]” Property of Chicago Film Archives.
• “Rhythmic Swimming: A Source Book of Synchronized Swimming and Water Pageantry,” by Katharine Whitney Curtis, Burgess publishing Company, 1942.
• “1952: Avery Brundage, fifth IOC President,” International Olympic Committee.
• “No male artistic swimmers at Olympics after U.S. leave May out of squad,” by Lori Ewing, Reuters, June 8, 2024.

Synchro Routines:

• "Team Gold Medal [video],” Russian Olympic Committee, Tokyo 2020 Olympic Summer Games
• “Duet Gold Medal [video],” Romania, Tokyo 2020 Olympic Summer Games.

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In 1971, a group of performers calling themselves the Free Theatre Associates (FTA), including Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, began putting on popular antiwar shows for audiences of active-duty GIs. Over 10 months they performed near military bases all over the United States and in the Pacific Rim. The Pacific Rim tour led to a documentary, which was released briefly in July 1972 and then quickly yanked from theaters. To help us learn about the FTA, I’m joined by theater historian Dr. Lindsay Goss, Assistant Professor in the School Of Theater, Film And Media Arts at Temple University and author of F*ck the Army!: How Soldiers and Civilians Staged the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,” composed by Al Piantadosi with lyrics by Alfred Bryan; the performance by the Peerless Quartet in New York City on January 6, 1915, is in the public domain and is available via the LIbrary of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Jane Fonda and Michael Alaimo in the FTA Show 1971;” the image is available via CC BY-SA 3.0 and can be found on Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “The Vietnam War: Reasons for US involvement in Vietnam,” BBC.
• “U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War: the Gulf of Tonkin and Escalation, 1964,” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State.
• “Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964),” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
• “Vietnam: An unpopular war, but an important legacy,” by Kenneth Dodd, Kessler Air Force Base, January 27, 2016.
• “The Vietnam War,” Iowa PBS.
• “GI Movement Special Section“ coordinated by Jessie Kindig, Antiwar and Radical History Project, University of Washington.
• “How Coffeehouses Fueled the Vietnam Peace Movement,” by David L. Parsons, The New York Times, January 9, 2018.
• “FTA! Behind the Scenes on the Anti-war Show Tour in Asia,” by Elaine Elinson, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
• “FTA [video],” directed by Francine Parker, 1972.

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In 1912, a group of wealthy and influential German Jews in uptown New York funded an effort to root out organized crime on the lower East Side, then the most densely populated neighborhood on Earth, home to half a million people, many of them recent Jewish Russian immigrants. As a result, a Jewish investigator and a Jewish lawyer joined the NYPD and pulled together a group of cops who refused to be paid off. The Incorruptibles, as the vice squad came to be known, quickly quashed the criminal element, but as war loomed in Europe, the attention and funds of the uptowners shifted abroad, and the Incorruptibles folded. Crime, of course, remained, and Jewish organized crime in New York only grew as the Prohibition Era dawned.

Joining me in this episode is writer Dan Slater, author of The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Havdole gut Schabes,” performed by Lizzie Einhorn Abramson in 1910; audio is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photo of Arnold Rothstein, taken on November 1, 1919, which appeared in several newspaper stories about the Black Sox scandal; it’s in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898 to 1906,” Library of Congress.
• “The Lower East Side,” Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History, Library of Congress.
• “Uncovering the History of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire,” by David von Drehle, Smithsonian Magazine, August 2006.
• “‘Ten Thousand Bigamists In New York’: The Criminalization Of Jewish Immigrants Using White Slavery Panics,” by Mia Brett, The Gotham Center for New York City History, October 27, 2020.
• “SAY SLAYERS DIDN'T RESEMBLE GUNMEN; Defense Rests After Calling Some of Those Who Saw the Murder of Rosenthal,” The New York Times, November 16, 1912.
• “Abraham Shoenfeld Papers,”American Jewish Historical Society.
• “An Assassin’s Bullet Took Three Years to Kill NYC Mayor William Jay Gaynor,” by Rose Eveleth, Smithsonian Magazine, September 11, 2013.
• “How Arnold ‘the Brain’ Rothstein Modernized the Mob,” by Angela M.H. Schuster, Avenue Magazine, May 22, 2020.
• “Ninety Years Later, Arnold Rothstein Murder Still a Mystery,” by Christian Cipollini, The Mob Museum, November 6, 2018.

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In 1974, Republican governor Ronald Reagan appointed educator Dr. Claudia Hampton, a Democrat active in her local NAACP, as the first Black woman trustee to the board of California State University. For the next twenty years Hampton would be known as the affirmative action trustee as she advocated for policies and budgets that would help support and diversify the CSU faculty, staff, and students. To discuss Dr. Hampton’s legacy, and the history of affirmative action in California, I’m joined in this episode by Dr. Donna J. Nicol, the Associate Dean of Personnel and Curriculum and professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts at California State University Long Beach and author of Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is "Blue Feather," by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com); Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. The episode image is a photograph of Dr. Claudia Hampton at an unidentified graduation ceremony, used on the CSU website.

Additional Sources:

• “Claudia H. Hampton; First Woman to Head CSU Trustees,” by Myrna Oliver, Los Angeles Times, August 17, 1994.
• “Trustee Emerita Claudia H. Hampton,” California State University.
• “Honoring the Voices of Our Ancestors,” California State University.
• “Watts Rebellion,” History.com, Originally posted on September 28, 2017, and Updated on June 24, 2020.
• “25 Years After the Watts Riots : McCone Commission’s Recommendations Have Gone Unheeded,” by Darrell Dawsey, Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1990.
• “Higher Education Guidelines for Executive Order 11246,” Office for Civil Rights (DHEW), October 1972.
• “Affirmative Action Reversal: Understanding the History and Implications,” by Jennifer Pierce, University of Minnesota, June 30, 2023.
• “Here's what happened when affirmative action ended at California public colleges,” by Emma Bowman, NPR, June 30, 2023.

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Josephine McCarty, née Fagan, aka Mrs. Virginia S. Seymour, dba Emma Burleigh. M.D., was many things: mother, teacher, saleswoman, spy, lobbyist, and abortionist. And in 1872 she was also an accused murderer, after eyewitnesses saw her fire a pistol on a public streetcar in Utica, New York, killing one man and wounding another. Historian R.E. Fulton, author of The Abortionist of Howard Street: Medicine and Crime in Nineteenth-Century New York, joins the podcast this week to discuss how Josephine was both extraordinary and completely ordinary and what her life can tell us about the changing arena of medicine and law and the role of women in both in the late 19th Century United States.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Sad Violin,” by Oleggio Kyrylkoww from Pixabay and is available for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is "Women indoors, France, 1870s" in the public domain and available via the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Additional Sources:

• “THE UTICA CAR MURDER.; Coroner's Inquest on the Body of Henry R. Hall--Circumstances of the Killing,” The New York Times, January 21, 1872.
• “Mrs. Dr. Emma Burleigh :the mysterious death of Margaret Campbell critically examined, with a review of the testimony, verdict of the jury, comments of the press, etc.,” by T. D. Crochers, Albany, NY, 1872; available via the Harvard Law School Library.
• “Medical Education in the 19th Century,” National Museum of Civil War Medicine, December 18, 2023.
• "The Entry of Women into Medivine in America: Education and Obstacles 1847-1910,” by Meryl S. Justin, Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
• “Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War,” by Karen Abbott, Harper Perennial, 2015.
• “Abortion, Race, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century America,” by Nicola Beisel and Tamara Kay, American Sociological Review, 2004, Vol. 69 (August:498–518).
• “Abortion was once common practice in America. A small group of doctors changed that,” by Ramtin Arablouei and Rung Abdelfatah, NPR All Things Considered, June 6, 2022.

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In 1817, the second state prison in New York opened in Auburn, situated on a fast-flowing river so waterpower could be used to run machinery in the factories that would be housed in the prison. In a new practice of incarceration that would come to be known as the Auburn System, the prisoners labored in silence during the day for the profit of the prison, stayed in solitary confinement every night, and lived under the constant threat of brutal violence from the guards. One prisoner, a man named William Freeman, who was locked up for a crime he swore he didn’t commit, demanded that he be compensated for his labor when he was released, and when no one would listen, he sought payback instead, committing a horrific crime.

Joining me in this episode is historian Dr. Robin Bernstein, the Dillon Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University and author of Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Bleeding hearted blues,” song and lyrics by Lovie Austin, with vocals by Bessie Smith and piano by Fletcher Henderson, recorded in New York City on June 14, 1923; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is an illustration of prisoners at Auburn wearing striped outfits and moving in lockstep from Historical Collections of the State of New York: Containing a General, by John Warner Barber, Henry Howe, published in 1845 and available via Google Books.

Additional Sources:

• “Geology of the Finger Lakes | Journeys Through the Finger Lakes [video],” PBS.
• “The Deserted Village,” by Oliver Goldsmith, 1770, via Poetry Foundation.
• “Both Sides of the Wall: Auburn and Its Prison,” The Cayuga Museum of History and Art.
• “19th Century Prison Reform Collection,” by Katie Thorsteinson, Cornell University Library.
• “People v. William Freeman, 1846,” Historical Society of the New York Courts.
• “People v. William Freeman (1847),” Cornell Law School
• “The trial of William Freeman for the murder of John G. Van Nest,” reported by Benjamin F. Hall, Derby, Miller & Co., 1848.
• “NY's New License Plates Will Still Be Made By Prisoners Earning 65 Cents An Hour,” by Christopher Robbins, Gothamist, August 23, 2019.

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As part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), so-called “unskilled” women were put to work in over 10,000 sewing rooms across the country, producing both garments and home goods for people in need. Those home goods included quilts, sometimes quickly-made utilitarian bedcoverings, but also artistic quilts worthy of exhibition. Quilts were featured in other New Deal Projects, too, like the WPA Handicraft Projects, part of the Women’s and Professional Projects Division. Throughout the Great Depression, the programs of the New Deal created a supportive and innovative environment for the art of quiltmaking.

Joining me in this episode is historian, writer, and podcaster Dr. Janneken Smucker, Professor of History at West Chester University and author of A New Deal for Quilts.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “A Mazurka played on harmonica,” performed by Aaron Morgan and recorded as part of a WPA project by Sidney Robertson Cowell on July 17, 1939, in Northern California; the recording is available via the Library of Congress.The episode image is “Grandmother from Oklahoma and her pieced quilt. California, Kern County,” take by Dorothea Lange in February 1936 through the U.S. Farm Security Administration; the photograph is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Additional Sources:

• “The Works Progress Administration,” PBS American Experience.
• “Works Progress Administration (WPA),” History.com, Originally posted July 13, 2017, and updated September 21, 2022.
• “Question 22: 1940 Census Provides a Glimpse of the Demographics of the New Deal,” by Ashley Mattingly, Prologue Magazine, National Archives, Summer 2012, Vol. 44, No. 2.
• “Women and the New Deal,” Living New Deal.
• “Women’s Work Relief in the Great Depression,” by Martha H. Swain, History Now, February 2004
• “WPA sewing project kept Hoosier women working through the Great Depression,” by Dawn Mitchell, Indy Star, January 19, 2018.
• “‘We Patch Anything’: WPA Sewing Rooms in Fort Worth, Texas,” Living New Deal, May 27, 2013.
• “Frugal and Fashionable: Quiltmaking During the Great Depression,” The Quilt Index.
• “WPA Milwaukee Handicraft Project,” Milwaukee Public Museum.

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Between 1935 and 1939, the Federal Theatre Project, part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), employed over 12,000 actors and put on over 1200 productions in 29 states. Led by Hallie Flanagan, the FTP, using only a small fraction of the total WPA budget, employed theater professionals; entertained audiences, some two-third of whom had never attended theater before the FTP; and helped launch the careers of people like director Orson Welles and playwright Arthur Miller. However, despite its success and small budget, the Federal Theater Project, was controversial, both for its supposed communist affiliations and because of the perception that theater wasn’t worthy of receiving federal tax dollars. After four years, Congress axed the project, immediately putting out of work 8,000 people across the country.

Joining me in this episode to tell us more about the Federal Theatre Project is Dr. Paul Gagliardi, Teaching Associate Professor at Marquette University and author of All Play and No Work: American Work Ideals and the Comic Plays of the Federal Theatre Project.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “The Broadway blues,” composed by Carey Morgan, with lyrics by Arthur Swanstrom; this performance was recorded by vocalist Aileen Stanley and conductor Rosario Bourdon on August 10, 1920, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photograph from A Sailor's Ballad, performed at St. James Theatre in the 1930s as part of the Federal Theatre Project; the image is available in the Library of Congress, Music Division, Federal Theatre Project Collection.

Additional Sources:

• “Hallie Flanagan Davis,” Vassar Encyclopedia.
• “The WPA Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939,” Library of Congress.
• “The Works Progress Administration,” PBS American Experience.
• “The Federal Theatre: Revisiting the Dream [video],” The Living New Deal, October 17, 2022.
• "Voodoo Macbeth - Trailer and Interview - Orson Welles - 1936 [video],” Shakespeare Network, posted on YouTube on May 2, 2021.
• “The Play That Electrified Harlem,” by Wendy Smith; originally published in the January-February 1996 issue of Civilization magazine and reposted on the Library of Congress website.
• “Federal Theatre Project,” by Paula Becker, HistoryLink, October 30, 2002.
• “The theater project that sparked a congressional probe — and culture war,” by James Shapiro, The Washington Post, May 26, 2024.
• “F.D.R.'S WPA FTP; At Moderate Box Office Prices the TheatreGoing Public Is Inexhaustible,” by Brooks Atkinson, The New York TImes, May 28, 1939.

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In 1919, racial tensions in the US, exacerbated by changes brought about by the first wave of the Great Migration and by the return of Black soldiers who demanded equal citizenship from the country they’d fought for, boiled over into a summer of violence. In Washington, DC, 39 people died after days of fighting between white mobs and Black citizens who stood their ground and fought back. The events of the Red Summer are just one example of the ways that Black Americans have resisted white supremacy. Our guest this episode, Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson, the Michael and Denise ‘68 Associate Professor of Africana Studies and the Chair of the Africana Studies Department at Wellesley College and author of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance, discusses five remedies by which Black people have responded and continue to respond to white supremacy.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “My way's cloudy,” a traditional negro spiritual, arranged by H.T. Burleigh, and performed by Contralto Marian Anderson and a backing orchestra conducted by Rosario Bourdon, in Camden, New Jersey, on December 10, 1923; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox.

The episode image is “National Guard during the 1919 Chicago Race Riots,” photograph by Jun Fujita; the photograph has no known copyright and is available via the Chicago History Museum, ICHi-065477.

Additional Sources:

• “Close Ranks (1918),” W.E.B. Du Bois, Editorial from The Crisis, Reprinted on BlackPast.
• “Returning Soldiers (1919),” W.E.B. Du Bois, Editorial from The Crisis, Reprinted in American Yawp.
• “African-American Troops Fought to Fight in World War I,” by Richard Goldenberg, U.S. Department of Defense, February 1, 2018.
• “An American and Nothing Else: The Great War and the Battle for National Belonging,” Yale University Library Online Exhibitions.
• “Racial Violence and the Red Summer,” National Archives.
• “Red Summer of 1919: How Black WWI Vets Fought Back Against Racist Mobs,” by Abigail Higgins, History.com, July 26, 2019.
• “The Red Summer of 1919, Explained,” by Ursula Wolfe-Rocco, Teen Vogue, May 31, 2020.
• “Hundreds of black deaths during 1919’s Red Summer are being remembered,” PBS NewsHour, July 23, 2019.
• “The Red Summer of 1919,” by Julius L Jones, Chicago History Museum, July 26, 2019.
• “Red Summer: The Race Riots of 1919,” National WWI Museum and Memorial.
• “The deadly race riot ‘aided and abetted’ by The Washington Post a century ago,” by Gillian Brockell, The Washington Post, July 15, 2019.
• “One Hundred Years Ago, a Four-Day Race Riot Engulfed Washington, D.C.,”by Patrick Sauer, Smithsonian Magazine, July 17, 2019.
• “How a Brutal Race Riot Shaped Modern Chicago,” by Adam Green, The New York Times, August 3, 2019.
• “Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle: The Life of Harry Haywood,” by Harry Haywood, Edited by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, University of Minnesota Press, May 8, 2012.
• “Our History,” NAACP.

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As the Civil War was drawing to a close, President Lincoln was preparing for what came after, with plans for reunification of the country, and he began to advocate for limited suffrage for Black Americans. John Wilkes Booth’s bullet cut short those plans, and Southerner Andrew Johnson, who was much more sympathetic to the former Confederacy, succeeded Lincoln. It wasn’t until Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, over Johnson’s veto, that federal troops enforced a true remaking of the former Confederate states, and for a brief period Black men voted and ran for office in the South in large numbers. In 1877, however, the federal troops withdrew, formally ending the Reconstruction era and leaving Black Americans alone to face a terror campaign of white supremacist violence.

Joining me in this episode is historian Dr. Manisha Sinha, the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and author of The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Brethren Rise!” performed by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers in New York City on February 3, 1916; the song is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Black Legislators Elected During Reconstruction,” an 1872 lithograph by Currier and Ives; image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Lincoln's Evolving Thoughts On Slavery, And Freedom,” Fresh Air NPR, October 11, 2010.
• “Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation,” Library of Congress.
• “Hannibal Hamlin (1861–1865),” UVA Miller Center.
• “Lincoln’s Successor Problem,” by Julie Witcover, Politico Magazine,” April 13, 2015.
• “How did Lincoln end up with a Democrat for a vice president?” by Roger Schlueter, Belleville News Democrat, April 6, 2017.
• “Andrew Johnson's Inauguration,” United States Senate.
• “A Call for Reconciliation: Lincoln’s Final Speech,” by Nathan Cooper, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, July 29, 2020.
• “The President's Last Public Address: April 11, 1865,” The American Presidency Project.
• “Andrew Johnson,” The White House.
• “​​Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction,” National Park Service.
• “Reconstruction,” History.com, Originally posted October 29, 2009, and updated January 24, 2024.
• “14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868),” National Archives.
• “A Short Overview of the Reconstruction Era and Ulysses S. Grant's Presidency,” National Park Service.
• “The Legacy of the Reconstruction Era’s Black Political Leaders,” by Olivia Waxman, Time Magazine, February 7, 2022.
• “Disputed Election of 1876: The death knell of the Republican dream,” by Sheila Blackford, UVA Miller Center.
• “Reconstruction Didn’t Fail. It Was Overthrown,” by Allen C. Guelzo, Time Magazine, April 30, 2018.

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Fictional depictions of Southern plantations often present romanticized visions of genteel country life, but for the people enslaved on plantations the reality was that of a forced labor camp. At the same time the plantation was also their home. And although they had no choice in where or how they lived, enslaved people did work to make their residences home, for instance by sweeping their yards, keeping items like books and ceramics, and even hiding personal objects in the walls or under the floor where they couldn’t be found by enslavers.

Joining me in this episode to help us understand the importance of homemaking by enslaved plantation workers is historian Dr. Whitney Nell Stewart, assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Dallas, and author of This Is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Welcome, Honey, to Your Old Plantation Home,” composed by Albert Gumble with lyrics by Jack Yellen, and performed by the Peerless Quartet in New York on June 19, 1916; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox Project. The episode image is “Picking cotton on a Georgia plantation, 1858;” the photograph is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress.

Additional sources:

• “‘Gone With the Wind’ is also a Confederate monument, but on film instead of stone,” by Nina Silber, The Washington Post, June 12, 2020.
• “How Gone With the Wind Took the Nation by Storm By Catering to its Southern Sensibilities,” by Carrie Hagen, Smithsonian Magazine, December 15, 2014.
• “Why Confederate Lies Live On,” by Clint Smith, The Atlantic, May 10, 2021.
• “The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,” Jefferson Davis, D. Appleton and Company. 1880.
• “The Plantation System,” National Geographic Education.
• “Slavery, the Plantation Myth, and Alternative Facts,” by Tyler Parry, Black Perspectives, December 6, 2017.
• “The Myth of the Peaceful Plantation,” by Wayne Curtis, The Daily Beast, Originally published on August 4, 2020, and updated on November 30, 2021.
• “Plantations could be used to teach about US slavery if stories are told truthfully,” by Amy Potter and Derek H. Alderman, The Conversation, March 15, 2022.
• “Inside America’s Auschwitz,” by Jared Keller, Smithsonian Magazine, April 4, 2016.

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Shortly after New Orleans became a US city (via the Louisiana Purchase), the municipal council established one of the country’s first professional salaried police forces and began operation of Police Jail, both efforts aimed at the capture and control of enslaved people who had run away from or otherwise disobeyed their enslavers. The history of New Orleans and Louisiana is an intertwined history of slavery and incarceration, the effects of which can still be felt today.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. John Bardes, Assistant Professor of History at Louisiana State University and author of The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “The Best Jazz Club In New Orleans,” by PaoloArgento, available for use via the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Slave prison (Calabozo), New Orleans,” by photographer A. Genthe, taken between 1920 and 1926; the photograph is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress.

Additional sources:

• “Timeline: New Orleans,” PBS American Experience.
• “Third Treaty of San Ildefonso,” by Elizabeth Clark Neidenbach, 64 Parishes.
• “Louisiana Purchase, 1803,” United States Department of State Office of the Historian.
• “‘Confined in the Dungeons’: Orleans Parish Prison and Self-Emancipated People,” Lauren Smith, Kathryn O’Dwyer, Editor, and with initial research contributions by Brett Todd, New Orleans Historical, accessed May 12, 2024.
• “Before the Civil War, New Orleans Was the Center of the U.S. Slave Trade,” by Joshua D. Rothman, Smithsonian Magazine, April 19, 2021.
• “Lincoln’s 'laboratory': How emancipation spread across South Louisiana during Civil War,” by Andrew Capps, Lafayette Daily Advertiser, June 18, 2021.
• “Why slavery as a punishment for crime was just on the ballot in some states,” PBS News Hour, November 18, 2022.
• “‘You’re a slave’: Inside Louisiana’s forced prison labor and a failed overhaul attempt,” by Cara McGoogan, Washington Post, Published January 1, 2023, and updated January 3, 2023.
• “Louisiana's over-incarceration is part of a deeply rooted pattern,” by Hassan Kanu, Reuters, February 1, 2023.

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Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie came of age in a deeply segregated country, battling racism to become celebrated musicians, composers, and band leaders whose music lives on. Joining me this week to discuss the lives and careers of these three musical geniuses is writer and journalist Larry Tye, author of The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Riverside Blues,” performed by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in 1923; the song is in the public domain and available via the Internet Archive. The episode images are: “Count Basie,” taken by James J. Kriegsmann in 1955, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; “Louis Armonstrong,” Herbert Behrens / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons; and “Duke Ellington,’’ Associated Booking (management), 1964, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “MLK Jr. on Jazz, The Soundtrack of Civil Rights,” by Mark Taylor, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, January 14, 2022.
• “Duke Ellington, a Master of Music, Dies at 75,” by John S. Wilson, The New York Times, May 25, 1974.
• “Seven facts to learn about Duke Ellington,” by Cristiana Lombardo, PBS American Masters, July 18, 2022.
• “Duke Ellington,” Songwriters Hall of Fame.
• “Louis Armstrong, Jazz Trumpeter and Singer, Dies,” by Albin Krebs, The New York Times, July 7, 1971.
• “Louis Armstrong Biography,” Louis Armstrong House Museum.
• “9 Things You May Not Know About Louis Armstrong,” by Evan Andrews, History.com, Originally published August 4, 2016 and updated June 1, 2023.
• “Count Basie, 79, Band Leader and Master of Swing, Dead,” by John S. Wilson, The New York TImes, April 27, 1984.
• “Count Basie Biography,” Rutgers University.
• “William ‘Count’ Basie,” National Endowment for the Arts.

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In its earliest years, the National League was not segregated, and a few teams included Black ballplayers, but in 1887 major and minor league owners adopted a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” that no new contracts would be given to Black players. In 1920, pitcher and manager Rube Foster founded the first of the Negro Leagues, the Negro National League, to organize professional Black baseball, which was played at a very high level. Other professional Negro leagues followed, and for decades the stars of the game played in the Negro Leagues, until the National League and American League began to slowly accept Black players, starting with Jackie Robinson in 1947.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Leslie Heaphy, Associate Professor of History at Kent State University at Stark, Vice President of the Society for American Baseball Research, founding editor of Black Ball, and author of The Negro Leagues, 1869-1960.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Boogaboo (Fox Trot),” composed by Jelly Roll Morton and performed by Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers Camden, New Jersey, on June 11, 1928; the music is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.The episode image is from the fourth Negro League East-West All-Star Game at Comiskey Park in Chicago on August 23, 1936; the photograph is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “The History Of Baseball And Civil Rights In America,” National Baseball Hall of Fame.
• “Bud Fowler’s Life Blazed A Trail From Cooperstown,” by Isabelle Minasian, National Baseball Hall Of Fame.
• “6 Decades Before Jackie Robinson, This Man Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier: Moses Fleetwood Walker played for a Major League Baseball team in the 1880s,” by Farrell Evans, History.com, Originally published April 27, 2022, and updated January 22, 2024.
• “The Great Migration (1910-1970),” National Archives.
• “The League [video],” Magnolia Pictures.
• “A 20th Century Baseball Institution,” by Matt Kelly, MLB.com.
• “The Negro League revolutionized baseball – MLB's new rules are part of its legacy,” by Dave Davies, NPR Fresh Air, July 10, 2023.
• “The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball,” National Baseball Hall of Fame.

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In 1977, a California state senator named John Briggs took to the steps of City Hall in San Francisco to announce a ballot initiative that would empower school boards to fire gay teachers based only on their sexual orientation. In response, gay activists around California mobilized, including gay Republicans, who formed among the first gay Republican organizations. In 1990, several of those California groups, together with groups across the country, combined into the Log Cabin Federation, which by 1992 had grown to 6000 members across 26 chapters.

Joining me in this episode to discuss this story and the longer history of Gay Republicans is historian, writer, and podcaster Dr. Neil J. Young, author of Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Funky_30sec” by Grand_Project from Pixabay; the music is free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Arguments at the United States Supreme Court for Same-Sex Marriage on April 28, 2015,” taken by Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED.

Additional Sources:

• “How 1970s Christian crusader Anita Bryant helped spawn Florida's LGBTQ culture war,” by Jillian Eugenios, NBC News, April 13, 2022.
• “Column: How 2.8 million California voters nearly banned gay teachers from public schools,” By Nicholas Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2021.
• “How Log Cabin Republicans Keep Out Of The Closet,” by NPR Weekend Edition Saturday, April 20, 2011.
• “Kevin McCarthy should meet the Ronald Reagan of 1978,” by John Kenneth White, The Hill, June 3, 2021.
• “Our History,” Log Cabin Republicans.
• “The bizarre history of Log Cabin’s presidential endorsements,” by Chris Johnson, The Washington Blade, August 21, 2019.
• “Melania Trump is set to make a return to her husband's campaign with a rare political appearance,” by Stephany Matat, The Washington Post, April 20, 2024.

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For several decades in the 20th Century, American universities, including elite institutions, took nude photos of their students, sometimes as often as twice a year, in order to evaluate their posture. In some cases students had to achieve a minimum posture grade in order to graduate. How did that practice develop, and how did it end? This week we’re discussing Americans’ obsession with posture with Dr. Beth Linker, the Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Debutante Intermezzo,” composed and performed by Howard Kopp in 1916; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is from “The posture of school children, with its home hygiene and new efficiency methods for school training,” from 1913, by Jessie H. Bancroft; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

• “Correct Posture League.; Will Educate Children and Adults to Stand Up Straight,” The New York Times, April 2, 1914.
• "College Slouch" Proved By Orthopedic Tests,” The Harvard Crimson, March 8, 1917.
• “The Rise and Fall of American Posture,” by David Yosifon and Peter N. Stearns, The American Historical Review 103, no. 4 (1998): 1057–95.
• “The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal,” by Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Times Magazine, January 15, 1995, Section 6, Page 26.
• “It’s Not Too Late to Fix Your Posture,” by Thessaly La Force, Vogue Magazine, January 18, 2024.
• “Six ways to improve your posture,” by Rebecca Newman, Financial Times, March 26 2024.
• “Learn how to correct your posture in only 60 seconds,” by Ron Kaspriske, Golf Digest, February 9, 2024.
• “How to promote good posture and avoid becoming hunched over,” by Michele Stanten, The Washington Post, December 11, 2023.

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In the fall of 1983, the LAPD, under Chief of Police Darryl Gates and in collaboration with the LA Unified School District, launched Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), sending 10 police officers into 50 elementary schools to teach kids how to say no to drugs. By the time DARE celebrated its 10-year anniversary, there were DARE officers in all 50 states, teaching 4.5 million students. The program was praised by presidents and supported by major corporate sponsors, but in the 1990s social scientists started to question its effectiveness, eventually leading to a precipitous decline in the numbers of school districts participating in the program.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Max Felker-Kantor, Associate Professor of History at Ball State University and author of Dare to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Back to the 80s”

by Roman Oriekhov from Pixabay; it is available via the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Children from Sterling Heights Elementary school recite the pledge of allegiance at the Drugs Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) graduation on Kadena Air Base (AB), Okinawa, Japan,” taken on February 28, 2003; the image is released to the public and is available via the National Archives (NAID: 6642856).

Additional Sources:

• “D.A.R.E.’s Story as a Leader in Drug Prevention Education,” D.A.R.E. America.
• “DARE Marks a Decade of Growth and Controversy : Youth: Despite critics, anti-drug program expands nationally. But some see declining support in LAPD,” by Jim Newton, Los Angeles Times, September 9, 1993.
• “How effective is drug abuse resistance education? A meta-analysis of Project DARE outcome evaluations,” by ST Ennett, NS Tobler, CL Ringwalt, and RL Flewelling, American Journal of Public Health 1994;84(9):1394-1401.
• “Just Say No to D.A.R.E.,” by Dennis P. Rosenbaum, Criminology and Public Policy, 6(4), 815-824.
• “DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked,” by Rosie Cima, Priceonomics.
• “Just Say No?” by Scott Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz, Scientific American Mind, 15552284, Jan/Feb2014, Vol. 25, Issue 1.
• “A brief history of DARE, the anti-drug program Jeff Sessions wants to revive,” by Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post, July 12, 2017.
• “Proclamation 5854 -- National D.A.R.E. Day, 1988,” by Ronald Reagan, September 8, 1988, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
• “Proclamation 8648—National D.A.R.E. Day, 2011,” by Barack Obama, April 11, 2011, The American Presidency Project.

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When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, his eldest child, 17-year-old Alice, rose quickly to celebrity status. The public loved hearing about the exploits of the poker-playing, gum-chewing “Princess Alice,” who kept a small green snake in her purse. By the time she died at age 96, Alice, whose Dupont Circle home included an embroidered pillow with the phrase “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me,” was such an institution in DC politics that she was known as The Other Washington Monument.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane, Professor of U.S. History and the Lowman Walton Chair of Theodore Roosevelt Studies at Dickinson State University in North Dakota, author of several books on Theodore Roosevelt, and host of the The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Podcast.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Alice Blue Gown,” from the musical comedy “Irene,” composed by Harry Tierney with lyrics by Joseph McCarthy; the soloist is Edith Day, and the recording from February 2, 1920, is in the public domain and available via the LIbrary of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photograph of Alice Roosevelt with a family parrot, taken around 1904; the photograph is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress.

Additional Sources:

• Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker, by Stacy A. Cordery, Penguin Books, 2008.
• “'Princess' Alice Roosevelt Longworth,” by Myra MacPherson, The Washington Post, February 21, 1980.
• “From a White House Wedding to a Pet Snake, Alice Roosevelt’s Escapades Captivated America,” by Francine Uenuma, Smithsonian Magazine, November 18, 2022.
• “Alice Roosevelt Longworth at 90,” by Sally Quinn, The Washington Post, February 12, 1974.
• “Alice Roosevelt Longworth: Presidential Daughter and American Celebrity,” by Lina Mann, The White House Historical Association, October 10, 2017.
• “A Presidential Daughter You Could Pick On: Alice Roosevelt Longworth was the sassiest offspring ever to occupy the White House,” by Carol Felsenthal, Politico, December 3, 2014.
• “The Last Time America Turned Away From the World,” by By John Milton Cooper, The New York Times, November 21, 2019.
• “The ‘First Daughter’ in Asia: Alice Roosevelt’s 1905 Trip,” The Association for Asian Studies.

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In August 1943, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt set off in secrecy from San Francisco on a military transport plane, flying across the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t until she showed up in New Zealand 10 days later that the public learned about her trip, a mission to the frontlines of the Pacific Theater in World War II to serve as "the President's eyes, ears and legs." Eleanor returned to New York five weeks and nearly 26,000 miles later, having seen an estimated 400,000 troops on her trip and producing a detailed report on American Red Cross activities in the Southwest Pacific for Norman Davis, Chairman of the American Red Cross.

Joining me in this episode is journalist Shannon McKenna Schmidt, author of The First Lady of World War II: Eleanor Roosevelt's Daring Journey to the Frontlines and Back.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is from the December 7, 1941, episode of Over Our Coffee Cups, a weekly 15-minute radio show hosted by Eleanor Roosevelt on the NBC Blue network; in 1942, these recordings were donated to the Library of Congress as a gift from the sponsor, the Pan-American Coffee Bureau; the audio clip can be accessed on the C-SPAN website. The episode image is “Eleanor Roosevelt, General Harmon, and Admiral Halsey in New Caledonia,” taken on September 16, 1943; the image is in the public domain and is available via the National Archives, NAID: 195974.

Additional Sources:

• “This Is What Eleanor Roosevelt Said to America’s Women on the Day of Pearl Harbor,” by Lily Rothman, Time Magazine, Originally published December 7, 2016, and updated on December 6, 2018.
• “ER and the Office of Civilian Defense,” Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project.
• “In the South Pacific War Zone (1943),” Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project.
• “Eleanor Roosevelt: American Ambassador to the South Pacific,” by Glenn Barnett, Warfare History Network, July 2006.
• “A First Lady on the Front Lines,” by Paul M Sparrow, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, August 26, 2016.
• “Eleanor Roosevelt and World War II,” National Park Service.
• “Eleanor Roosevelt: South Pacific Visit [video],” clip from The Roosevelts by Ken Burns, September 13, 2014.

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Journalist Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore traveled the world in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, writing books and hundreds of articles about such places as Alaska, Japan, China, India, and helping shape the journal of the National Geographic Society into the photograph-heavy magazine it is today. Scidmore is perhaps best known today for her long-running and eventually successful campaign to bring Japanese cherry trees to Potomac Park in Washington, DC.

Joining me in this episode is writer Diana Parsell, author of Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington's Cherry Trees.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “My Cherry Blossom,” written by Ted Snyder and performed by Lanin’s Orchestra on May 12, 1921, in New York City; audio is in the public domain and is available via the Discography of American Historical Recordings. The episode image is "Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore [signature]," The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1895 - 1910.

Additional Sources:

• “Cherry blossoms’ champion, Eliza Scidmore, led a life of adventure,” by Michael E. Ruane, The Washington Post, March 13, 2012.
• “Eliza Scidmore,” National Park Service.
• “Beyond the Cherry Trees: The Life and Times of Eliza Scidmore,” by Jennifer Pocock, National Geographic,March 27, 2012.
• “The Surprisingly Calamitous History of DC’s Cherry Blossoms,” by Hayley Garrison Phillips, Washingtonian, March 18, 2018.
• “Cherry Blossoms, Travel Logs, and Colonial Connections: Eliza Scidmore’s Contributions to the Smithsonian,” by Kasey Sease, Smithsonian Institution Archives, August 18, 2020.
• “Celebrating Eliza Scidmore: Nat Geo’s First Female Photographer,” by Kern Carter, Writers are Superstars, May 14, 2023.
• “The American Woman Who Reported On Japan’s Entry Into World War I,”
• By Diana Parsell, Doughboy Foundation, August 8, 2023.
• “The woman who shaped National Geographic,” National Geographic, February 22, 2017.
• “Photo lot 139, Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore photographs relating to Japan and China,” National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

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In 1812, when the United States was still a young nation and its State Department was tiny, American citizens began heading around the world as Christian missionaries. Early in the 19th Century, the US government often saw missionaries as experts on the politics, culture, and language of regions like China and the Sandwich Islands, but as the State Department expanded its own global footprint, it became increasingly concerned about missionary troubles.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Emily Conroy-Krutz, Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University and author of Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Jesus, Love of My Soul,” written by Charles Wesley and performed by Simeon Butler March and Henry Burr on February 25, 1916; the audio is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is from the Jubilee Story of the China Inland Mission, Marshall Broomhall, Morgan & Scott, London, 1915; it is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

• “Were Christian missionaries ‘foundational’ to the United States?” by Emily Conroy-Krutz, The Washington Post, October 18, 2018.
• “Into All the World: the Story of Haystack [video,]” Chaplain Rick Spalding, Williams College, September 25, 2013.
• “American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions historical documents,” Global Ministries.
• “The life and letters of Samuel Wells Williams, LL.D., missionary, diplomatist, Sinologue,” by Frederick Wells Williams, 1889.
• “Missionary Movement - Timeline Movement,” The Association of Religion Data Archives.
• “The Foreign Missionary Movement in the 19th and early 20th Centuries,” by Daniel H. Bays, National Humanities center.
• “A History of the United States Department of State, 1789-1996,” Released by the Office of the Historian, July 1996.
• “About,” United States Department of State.
• “In 200-year tradition, most Christian missionaries are American,” by Daniel Lovering, Reuters, February 20, 2012.

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In 1931, Judge Samuel Seabury was leading an investigation for Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt into corruption in New York’s magistrate courts when a witness in the investigation named Vivian Gordon was found murdered in the Bronx. Because of the public demand for answers in this high-profile murder case, FDR could no longer keep his uneasy peace with Tammany Hall and expanded the scope of Seabury’s investigation. What Seabury’s team uncovered brought down Mayor Jimmy Walker and began to topple the Tammany Hall stranglehold on New York City politics.

Joining me in this episode is writer Michael Wolraich, author of The Bishop And The Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is by Daniel Carlton on Pixabay and is available for use via the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Mid-town Manhattan, looking northeast toward Chrysler Building,” photographed by William Frange, ca. 1931; there are no known restrictions on publication and the image is available via the Library of Congress.

Additional Sources:

• “The Politics and Iconography of Tammany in the Early American Republic,” by Keith Muchowski, Journal of the American Revolution, August 19, 2021
• “Boss Tweed’s Rise and Downfall | New York: A Documentary Film [video],” PBS.
• “The corrupt N.Y. congressman who was sentenced to prison — and escaped,” by George Bass, The Washington post, July 2, 2023.
• “The Case For Tammany Hall Being On The Right Side Of History,” NPR Fresh Air, March 5, 2014.
• “How an Unlikely Alliance Saved the Democrats 100 Years Ago,” by Terry Golway, Politico Magazine, September 17, 2018.
• “Franklin D. Roosevelt: Life Before the Presidency,” by William E. Leuchtenburg, UVA Miller Center.
• “Samuel Seabury,” Historical Society of the New York Courts.
• “The Insane 1930s Graft Investigation That Took Down New York’s Mayor—and Then Tammany Hall,” by Erin Blakemore, History.com, Originally posted April 17, 2019, and updated April 22, 2019.
• “The Dead Woman Who Brought Down the Mayor,” by Rachel Shteir, Smithsonian Magazine, February 25, 2013.
• “Jimmy Walker May Have Been NYC's Most Corrupt Mayor, but Damn Was He Fun,” Avenue Magazine, December 2, 2021.
• “Jazz Age Mayor and Villager, Jimmy Walker,” by Sarah Bean Apmann, Off the Grid, June 18, 2020.

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Starting in November 1861, the Union Army held the city of Beaufort, South Carolina, using the Sea Islands as a southern base of operations in the Civil War. Harriet Tubman joined the Army there, debriefing freedom seekers who fled enslavement in nearby regions and ran to seek the Union Army’s protection in Beaufort. With the intelligence Tubman gathered, she and Colonel James Montgomery led 150 Black soldiers on a daring raid along the Combahee RIver in June 1863, destroying seven rice plantations in the heart of the Confederate breadbasket, causing $6 million worth of damages and liberating 756 people from enslavement on the rice fields.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Edda Fields-Black, Associate Professor of HIstory at Carnegie Mellon University and author of COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is "Dangerous," by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. The episode image is Mcpherson & Oliver, photographer. “2nd South Carolina Infantry Regiment raid on rice plantation, Combahee, South Carolina,” by Mcpherson and Oliver, published in Harper’s Weekly, July 4, 1863; the image is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress.

Additional Sources:

• “Port Royal, Battle of,” by Stephen R. Wise, Encyclopedia of South Carolina, Originally published June 20, 2016, and updated August 22, 2022.
• “Nov. 7, 1861: The Port Royal Experiment Initiated,” Zinn Education Project.
• “The Port Royal Experiment,” The Lowcountry Digital History Initiative (LDHI).
• “Port Royal Experiment: Reconstruction Era in Beaufort, South Carolina with Park Ranger Chris Barr [video],” National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT), August 23, 2022.
• “Life on the Sea Islands (Part I),” by Charlotte Forten Grimké, The Atlantic, May 1864.
• “Life on the Sea Islands (Part II),” by Charlotte Forten Grimké, The Atlantic, June 1864.
• “Harriet Tubman’s Great Raid,” by Paul Donnelly, The New York Times, June 7, 2013.
• “After the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman Led a Brazen Civil War Raid,” by Alexis Clark, History.com, Originally published November 1, 2019, and updated August 29, 2023.

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Today, Americans consume 400 pounds of ice a year, each. That would have been unfathomable to people in the 18th century, but a number of innovators and ice barons in the 19th and 20th centuries changed the way we think about the slippery substance. Joining me in this episode is writer Dr. Amy Brady, author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks–A Cool History of a Hot Commodity.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “All She Gets from the Iceman is Ice,” written by Arthur J. Lamb and Alfred Solman and performed by Ada Jones in 1908; the song is in the public domain and is available via the Internet Archive. The episode image is: “Girls deliver ice. Heavy work that formerly belonged to men only is being done by girls. The ice girls are delivering ice on a route and their work requires brawn as well as the partriotic ambition to help," taken on September 16, 1918; image is in the public domain and is available via the National Archives (NAID: 533758; Local ID: 165-WW-595A(3)).

Additional Sources:

• “The Stubborn American Who Brought Ice to the World,” By Reid Mitenbuler, The Atlantic, February 5, 2013.
• “Tracing the History of New England’s Ice Trade,” by Devin Hahn and Amy Laskowski, The Brink: Pioneering Research from Boston University, February 4, 2022.
• “The Bizarre But True Story of America's Obsession With Ice Cubes,” by Reid Mitenbuler, Epicurious, September 26, 2016.
• “The Surprisingly Cool History of Ice, by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, Mental Floss, February 10, 2016.
• “Keeping your (food) cool: From ice harvesting to electric refrigeration,” by Emma Grahn, National Museum of American History, April 29, 2015.
• “When Everyone Wanted to Be the Iceman,” by Kelly Robinson, Atlas Obscura, August 23, 2019.
• “The History of Human-Made Ice,” by Amy Brady, Discover Magazine, December 2, 2023.
• “The Dawn of New York's Ice Age,” by Edward T. O'Donnell, The New York Times, July 21, 2005.
• “The History of the Refrigerator,” by Mary Bellis, ThoughtCo, Updated on October 31, 2019.
• “A Chilling History: on the science and technology of portable coolers,” by Laura Prewitt, Science History Institute, July 24, 2023.
• No chill: A closer look at America’s obsession with ice,” by Haley Chouinard, Business of Home, December 23, 2020.
• “Climate-Friendly Cocktail Recipes Go Light on Ice,” by Amy Brady, Scientific American, July 1, 2023.

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If you’re like most Americans – or most people on earth – you have a pair of jeans, or maybe five, in your wardrobe. There’s a decent chance you’re wearing jeans right now. These humble pants were invented by a Reno tailor in the 1870s in response to a frustrated customer whose husband kept wearing through his pants too quickly. How, then, did they become a global phenomenon expected to exceed $100 billion in sales by 2025? Joining me to help answer that question is historian, writer, and screenwriter, Dr. Carolyn Purnell, author of Blue Jeans.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Blue Jeans,” composed by Josef Pasternack and performed by the Peerless Quartet in 1921; audio is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Five Idaho farmers, members of Ola self-help sawmill co-op, in the woods standing against a load of logs ready to go down to their mill about three miles away,” photographed by Dorothea Lange in Gem County, Idaho, in October 1939 for the Farm Security Administration; the image is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress.

Additional Sources:

• “The Origin of Blue Jeans,” by Joseph Stromberg, Smithsonian Magazine, September 26, 2011.
• “The History of Denim,” Levi Strauss & Co., July 4, 2019.
• “Riveted: The History of Jeans [video],” PBS American Experience Season 34, Episode 1, February 7, 2022.
• “Durable and enduring, blue jeans turn 150,” by Jessica Green, NPR Weekend Edition Sunday, May 23, 2023.
• “Behind 150 years of the world’s most famous denim jeans,” by Gordon Ng, Vogue Singapore, May 3, 2023.
• “How Denim Became a Political Symbol of the 1960s,” by Brandon Tensley, Smithsonian Magazine, December 2020.
• “Throwback Thursday: Levi’s — Right For School?” Levi Strauss & Co., September 24, 2015.

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In January 1942, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia sent New York City police out on an important mission; their objective: to find and destroy tens of thousands of pinball machines. But some of pinball’s most important innovations, including the development of flippers, happened in the decades that it was banned in New York and many other US cities. This week we dig in to the fun – and sometimes surprising – history of pinball.

Joining me in this episode is illustrator and cartoonist Jon Chad, author of Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball. I’m also joined by a special guest co-host, my son, Teddy.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Caterpillar,” by Gvidon, available for use under the Pixabay content license. The episode image is “Playing the pinball machine at the steelworkers' Serbian Club in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania,” photographed by Jack Delano, 1941, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.

Additional Sources:

• “The Backstory: The Comte d’Artois, pinball’s original wizard, lived life at full tilt,” by By Brendan Kiley, Pacific NW Magazine, December 1, 2019.
• “The Human Side of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette,” by Joe McGasko, biography.com, October 14, 2020.
• “Bagatelle patent model patented by Montague Redgrave,” Smithsonian.
• “Baffle Ball,” The Internet Pinball Database Presents.
• “Bally MFG Company, est. 1932,” by Andrew Clayman, Made in Chicago Museum.
• “That Time America Outlawed Pinball,” by Christopher Klein, History.com, Originally published November 15, 2016, and updated October 5, 2023.
• “How the Mob Made Pinball Public Enemy #1 in the 1940s,” by Allison McNearney, Daily Beast, November 14, 2021.
• “Chicago once waged a 40-year war on pinball,” by Ryan Smith, Chicago Reader, May 5, 2018.
• “How One Perfect Shot Saved Pinball From Being Illegal,” by Matt Blitz, Gizmodo, August 16, 2013.
• “‘These Things Are Works of Art’: Chicago’s History as the Manufacturing Center for Pinball Machines,” by Meredith Francis, WTTW Chicago, January 26, 2024.
• “An Industry Suffers as Few People Play a Mean Pinball Anymore,” Washington Post, July 30, 2000.
• “Inside America's Last Great Pinball Factory,” by Peter Rugg, Popular Mechanics, March 27, 2017.
• “The Inside Story of Pinball's Renaissance,” by Mike Mahardy, IGN, May 20, 2017.
• “A Look At The Unlikely Resurgence Of Pinball In The Mobile Age [video],” NBC News, October 1, 2017.
• Pinball Map

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In 1812, the United States Congress voted to provide $50,000 to assist victims of a horrific earthquake in the far-away country of Venezuela. It would be another nine decades before the US again provided aid for recovery efforts after a foreign rapid-onset natural disaster, but over time it became much more common for the US to help in such emergencies. This disaster relief, provided via a three-pronged response from the State Department, the military, and the voluntary sector, especially represented by the American Red Cross, serves both humanitarian and diplomatic functions for the United States.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Julia Irwin, the T. Harry Williams Professor of History at Louisiana State University and author of Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Palloncini sweet and happy piano song,” by Pastichio_Piano_Music, available for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Personnel of Commander Carrier Division 15, showing the

prime minister of Ceylon the supplies that the US Navy was delivering to flood victims in his country in early 1958,” Image courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command.

Additional Sources:

• How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr, Picador USA, 2020.
• “The City of Earthquakes,” by Horace D. Warner, The Atlantic, March 1883.
• “Founding and early years of the ICRC (1863-1914),” International Committee of the Red Cross, May 12, 2020.
• “A Brief History of the American Red Cross,” American Red Cross.
• “American Empire,” American Yawp.
• “December 28, 1908: The Tsunami of Messina,” by David Bressan, Scientific American History of Geology, December 28, 2012.
• By David Bressan on December 28, 2012
• “USAID History,” United States Agency for International Development.
• “Where We Work,” United States Agency for International Development.

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In 1938, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally developed the potent psychedelic LSD, although it would be several years before Hofmann realized what he’d created. During the Cold War, the CIA launched a top-secret mind control project, code-named MKUltra, experimenting with LSD and other psychedelic substances, drugging military personnel, CIA employees, and civilians, often without their consent or even their knowledge. At the same time, the CIA was funding university research on psychedelics, involving scientists like Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson and counterculture luminaries like Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg. Although mid-20th Century scientists had seen therapeutic promise in psychedelics, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, which classified LSD, along with psilocybin, MDMA, and peyote, as Schedule I drugs, defined by the DEA as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Benjamin Breen, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is Psychedelic Atmospheric Dream Guitar, by Sonican, available for use via the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash; free to use under the Unsplash License.

Additional Sources:

• “Your employer may be adding another health benefit to its roster: psychedelic drugs,” by Sonya Collins, Fortune, January 19, 2024.
• “Psychedelics gave terminal patients relief from their intense anxiety,” by By Meryl Davids Landau, The Washington Post, January 13, 2024.
• “People were using psychedelic drugs in Bronze Age Europe, study finds,” by Sheena Goodyear, CBC Radio, April 12, 2023.
• “Prehistoric peyote use: alkaloid analysis and radiocarbon dating of archaeological specimens of Lophophora from Texas,” by Hesham R El-Seedi, et al, Journal of ethnopharmacology, 2005, vol. 101,1-3: 238-42.
• “'Apparently Useless': The Accidental Discovery of LSD,” by Tom Shroder, The Atlantic, September 9, 2014.
• “The Evolutionary Origins of Psychedelics,” by Noah Whiteman, Time Magazine, November 29, 2023.
• “A brief history of psychedelic psychiatry,” by Mo Costandi, The Guardian, September 2, 2014.
• “Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of Culture,” Library of Congress.
• “History of CIA,” Central Intelligence Agency.
• “What We Know About the CIA’s Midcentury Mind-Control Project,” by Kat Eschner, Smithsonian Magazine, April 13, 2017.
• “The CIA’s Appalling Human Experiments with Mind Control,” by Brianna Nofil, History.com.
• American Trip: Set, Setting, and the Psychedelic Experience in the Twentieth Century, by Ido Hartogsohn, 2020.
• “What to know about Colorado’s psychedelic law,” by Andrew Kenney, Colorado Public Radio News, June 21, 2023.

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In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, the last slave ship landed in the United States from Africa. The transatlantic slave trade had been illegal in the US since 1808, but Alabama enslaver Timothy Meaher and his friends were so sure they could get away with it that they made a bet and hired Meaher’s neighbor, William Foster, to captain a voyage to Africa. Foster and his crew smuggled 110 terrified kidnapped Africans to Mobile Bay, taking them from a homeland they loved to cruel enslavement in the deep South, and changing their lives forever.

Joining me in this episode is historian Dr. Hannah Durkin, author of The Survivors of the Clotilda: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Slow Thoughtful Sad Piano (This Cold Feeling),” by Ashot Danielyan; the music is available via the Pixabay content license. The episode image is “Abaché and Kazoola ‘Cudjoe’ Lewis,” by Emma Langdon Roche from Historic Sketches of the South, published in 1914 and now in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

• “Historical Context: The Constitution and Slavery,”
• by Steven Mintz, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
• “The Slave Trade Clause,” National Constitution Center.
• “Congress votes to ban slave trade: March 2, 1807,” by Andrew Glass, Politico, March 2, 2009.
• “The Execution of Nathaniel Gordon,” The New York Times, February 22, 1862.
• “Some Economic Aspects of the Domestic Slave Trade, 1830-1860,” by Robert Evans, Southern Economic Journal 27, no. 4 (1961): 329–37.
• “The Atlantic Slave Trade Continued Illegally in America Until the Civil War,” by John Harris, History.com, January 28, 2021.
• “Historical Timeline,” Clotilda: The Exhibition at Africatown Heritage House, operated by the History Museum of Mobile.
• The Clotilda Descendants Association
• “The ‘Clotilda,’ the Last Known Slave Ship to Arrive in the U.S., Is Found,” by Allison Keyes, The Smithsonian, May 22, 2019.
• “Last survivor of transatlantic slave trade discovered,” by Sean Coughlan, BBC News, March24, 2020.
• “Exploring the Clotilda, the last known slave ship in the U.S., brings hope,” by Debbie Elliott and Marisa Peñaloza, NPR Morning Edition, June 15, 2022.
• “Descendants of Alabama slave owner say they're ‘figuring out next steps’ to make amends,” by Anderson Cooper, Aliza Chasan, Denise Schrier Cetta, and Katie Brennan, CBS News, November 19, 2023.

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In 1830, amid the Second Great Awakening in the burned-over district of New York State, Joseph Smith, Jr., and Oliver Cowdery ordained each other as the first two elders in what they then called the Church of Christ. Within eight years, the Governor of Missouri issued an executive order that members of the church, by then known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state,” driving 10,000 of the faithful to flee to Illinois. This week we discuss the turbulent–and often violent–history of Mormonism and look at the religion’s complicated relationship with the country in which it originated.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Benjamin E. Park, Associate Professor of History at Sam Houston State University and author of American Zion: A New History of Mormonism.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “O My Father,” Composed by Evan Stephens with lyrics by Eliza R. Snow; performed by Trinity Mixed Quartet on September 18, 1923; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is "The Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA,” Photo by David Iliff; License: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Additional Sources:

• “Timeline: The Early History of the Mormons,”PBS American Experience.
• “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Fast Facts,” CNN, December 1, 2022.
• “Mormonism: Guide to Materials and Resources,” The Special Collections & Archives department of the Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University.
• The Joseph Smith Papers
• “Doctrine and Covenants 132,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
• “The Brink of War: One hundred fifty years ago, the U.S. Army marched into Utah prepared to battle Brigham Young and his Mormon militia,” by David Roberts, Smithsonian Magazine, June 2008.
• “How Mormonism Went Mainstream,” by Benjamin E. Park, Time Magazine, September 21, 2023.
• “Latter-day Saint membership passed 17 million in 2023, according to a new church statistical report,” by Tad Walch, Deseret News, April 1, 2023.
• “The Mormon Poetess Dead,” The New York Times, December 6, 1887.

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Almost as soon as there were radio stations, there were college radio stations. In 1948, to popularize FM radio, the FCC introduced class D non commercial education licenses for low-watt college radio stations. By 1967, 326 FM radio signals in the United States operated as “educational radio,” 220 of which were owned and operated by colleges and universities. The type of programming that these stations offered varied widely, from lectures and sporting events, to various kinds of musical shows, but toward the late 1970s, a new genre of college rock appeared on the scene. Record labels took note as college DJs discovered up-and-coming new artists, although they sometimes stopped playing those artists once they made it big.

Joining this week’s episode is historian Dr. Katherine Rye Jewell, a Professor at Fitchburg State University and author of Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “College Days by Charles Hart, et al., 1919, in the public domain and retrieved from the Library of Congress. The episode image is “Don Jackson, a senior, delivering a news broadcast at the Iowa State College radio station,” photographed by Jack Delano at Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa in May 1942; photograph in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information.

Additional Sources:

• “The Development of Radio,” PBS American Experience.
• “Marconi’s First Wireless Transmission,” by Kath Bates, Oxford Open Learning Trust, November 28, 2018.
• “Marconi's first radio broadcast made 125 years ago,” by Jonathan Holmes, BBC News, May 13, 2022.
• “Radio's First Voice...Canadian!” by Mervyn C. Fry, The Cat's Whisker - Official Voice of the Canadian Vintage Wireless Association Vol. 3, No. 1 - March 1973.
• “History of Commercial Radio,” Federal Communications Commission.
• “Which college radio station was the first in the United States?,” About College Radio, Radio Survivor, Updated March 14, 2023.
• “About WRUC 89.7,” WRUC.union.edu.
• “Celebrating 90 Years of Broadcasting at Curry College,” Curry College.
• “What Is "College" Rock?” by Shawn Persinger, Premier Guitar, July 15, 2023.
• “When college radio went mainstream—and 20 bands that came with it,” by Matthew Everett, Yardbarker, November 7, 2017.
• “10 Legendary Bands that Wouldn’t Be Legendary without College Radio,” by Dave Sarkies, College Radio Foundation, September 21, 2020.
• “U2 Rock Fordham University: On the Ground at the ‘Secret’ Set,” by Jenn Pelly, Rolling Stone, March 6, 2009.
• “All that is left is R.E.M. Steeple – Celebrating the beginning of Athens’ legendary band,” by Joe Vitale, UGA Wire, April 5, 2020.
• “‘60 Songs That Explain the ’90s’: R.E.M. and the Leap From College-Rock Gods to Mainstream Icons,” by Rob Harvilla, The Ringer, September 29, 2021.
• “REM: The band that defined, then eclipsed college rock,” by Mark Savage, BBC, September 21, 2011.
• “History Timeline,” Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
• “History,” NPR.
• “Left of the dial: College radio days,” by Daniel de Vise, The Washington Post, June 26, 2011.
• “Technology and the Soul of College Radio,” by Jennifer Waits, Pop Matters, April 19, 2010.
• “The Enduring Relevance of College Radio,” SPIN, November 10, 2020.
• “College Radio Maintains Its Mojo,” by Ben Sisario, The New York Times, December 5, 2008.

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What makes a Christmas movie a Christmas movie? How do Christmas movies react to – and help us heal from – collective trauma? How can a British Christmas movie feel quintessentially American? We discuss all that and more this week at the 20th Anniversary of Love Actually, with G. Vaughn Joy, a film historian, writer, podcast host, and PhD candidate at University College London.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The first mid-episode musical selection is “The First Noel,” from Christmas Songs and Carols (1912) by Trinity Choir; in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The second mid-episode musical selection is “Jingle Bells,” from Favorite Colleges Songs (1916) by Victor Male Chorus; in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is from a publicity poster for Love Actually.

Films Discussed:

• It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
• The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
• A Christmas Story (1983)
• Die Hard (1988)
• Love Actually (2003)
• The Holiday (2016)
• Red Nose Day Actually (2017)
• Klaus (2019)

Additional Sources:

• “From Fiction to Film: ‘The Greatest Gift’ and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” by Elizabeth Brown, Library of Congress Blog, December 21, 2018.
• “How World War II shaped ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” by Rachael Scott, CNN, December 25, 2021.
• “What ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Teaches Us About American History,” by Christopher Wilson, December 16, 2021.
• “How A Christmas Story Went from Low-Budget Fluke to an American Tradition,” by Sam Kashner, Vanity Fair, November 30, 2023.
• “What’s That Building? The real-life locations from ‘A Christmas Story,’” by Dennis Rodkin, WBEZ Chicago, December 21, 2023.
• A Christmas Story House.
• “Love Actually,” by Roger Ebert, RogertEbert.com, November 7, 2003.
• “FILM REVIEW; Tales of Love, the True and the Not-So-True” by A.O. Scott, The New York Times, November 7, 2003.
• “Love Actually Is the Least Romantic Film of All Time,” by Christopher Orr, The Atlantic, December 6, 2013
• “25 Surprising Facts About ’Love Actually’ for Its 20th Anniversary,” by Kristy Ruchko, Mental Floss, Posted on November 6, 2018 and Updated on November 13, 2023.
• “The Visible Magic of Asking ‘Why?’ A Contemporary History Approach to Klaus (2019),” by Vaughn Joy, Review Roulette, December 24, 2023.

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Stories of the Civil Rights Movement don’t often center the fundraisers, often Black women, whose tireless efforts made the movement possible; today we’re featuring one of those women. Mollie Moon, born in 1907, the founder and first chairperson of the National Council of Urban League Guilds, raised millions of dollars for the Civil Rights Movement, using her charm and connections to throw charity galas, like her famed Beaux Arts Ball, where everyone wanted to be seen. Her long service to the movement eventually earned her the President's Volunteer Action Award from President George H. W. Bush in 1989.

Joining this episode to tell us all about Mollie Moon and the funding of the Civil Rights Movement is Dr. Tanisha C. Ford, professor of history in The Graduate Center, at CUNY, and author of Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Crazy Blues,” composed by Perry Bradford and performed by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1921; the recording is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is from the cover of Our Secret Society; Image: Harper Collins.

Additional Sources:

• “Socialite Mollie Moon Used Fashion Shows to Fund the Civil Rights Movement,” by Tanisha C. Ford, Harper’s Bazaar, March 8, 2021.
• “Mollie Moon, 82, Founding Head Of the Urban League Guild, Dies,” by Peter B. Flint, New York Times, June 26, 1990.
• “Mollie Moon: A Real Voice,” by Lev Earle, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester, March 25, 2021.
• “Henry Lee Moon (1901-1985),” by Susan Bragg, BlackPast, June 19, 2011.
• “Louise Thompson and the Black and White Film,” by Denise Lynn, Black Perspectives, AAIHS, April 15, 2021.
• “Harlem Community Art Center,” Mapping the African American Past, Columbia University.
• National Urban League Guild.
• “Funding a Social Movement: The Ford Foundation and Civil Rights, 1965-1970,” by Rachel Wimpee, Rockefeller Archive Center, November 4, 2020.

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In the ravages of post-World War II Europe, some Jewish women survivors of the Holocaust found the beginnings of a new life when they met – and married – American (and Canadian and British) men serving with the Allied forces. These women were part of a much larger group of war brides, who came to the United States in such large numbers that they required a change in immigration law, but these Jewish war brides faced additional challenges, from language barriers to the memory of the trauma they’d experienced to finding a community in their new home. Dr. Robin Judd, Associate Professor of History at the Ohio State University and author of Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides after the Holocaust, joins this episode to help us explore the story of these women.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Hava Nagila - Orchestra Clarinet,” by JuliusH, available for use via the Pixabay content license. The episode image is “Hanns Ann Alexander wedding 1946,” taken on May 19, 1946, and posted on Flickr by David Lisbona; the image was adapted for use under CC BY 2.0 DEED.

Additional Sources:

• “Displaced Persons,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
• “Coming To America: The War Brides Act of 1945,” The National WWII Museum, December 28, 2020.
• “Here Came The War Brides 60 Years Ago, a Vast Wave of British Women Followed Their New Loves to a New Land,” by Tamara Jones, The Washington Post, February 12, 2006.
• “Band of Sisters,” by Sarah Kewshaw, The New York Times, July 6, 2008.
• “America Denied Refugees After the End of World War II—Just As We Are Today,” by David Nasaw, Time Magazine, September 17, 2020.
• “Statement by the President Upon Signing the Displaced Persons Act,” Harry S. Truman, June 25, 1948, Truman Library.
• “Flory Jagoda: Singer Songwriter, Storyteller, and Composer,” Ladino Music Today as a Tool of Storytelling and Preservation, Curated by Laurel Comiter, Gabriel Mordoch, and Gabriel Duque, University of Michigan Library.

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Scholar Merze Tate, born in Michigan in 1905, overcame the odds in what she called a “sex and race discriminating world,” to earn graduate degrees from Oxford University and Harvard University on her way to becoming the first Black woman to teach in the History Department at Howard University. During her long career, Tate published 5 books, 34 journal articles and 45 review essays in the fields of diplomatic history and international relations. Her legacy extends beyond her publications, as the fellowships she endowed continue to support students at her alma maters.

Joining me in this episode is historian Dr. Barbara Savage, the Geraldine R. Segal Professor Emerita of American Social Thought and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is "Trio for Piano Violin and Viola," by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. The episode image is “Portrait of Merze Tate;” photograph taken by Judith Sedwick in 1982 and housed in the Black Women Oral History Project Collection at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America; there are no known copyright restrictions.

Additional sources:

• “Merze Tate Collection,” Western Michigan University Archives.
• “Who was Dr. Merze Tate?” Western Michigan University.
• “Merze Tate: Her Legacy Continues,” Merze Tate Explorers.
• “WMU's Merze Tate broke color barriers around the world [video],” WOOD TV8, February 18, 2021.
• “Merze Tate,” by Maurice C. Woodard. PS: Political Science & Politics 38, no. 1 (2005): 101–2.
• “Vernie Merze Tate (1905-1996),” by Robert Fikes, BlackPast, December 22, 2018.
• “Merze Tate,” St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford.
• “Diplomatic Historian Merze Tate Dies At 91,” Washington Post, July 8, 1996.
• “Merze Tate College,” Western Michigan University.

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The beginning of the Civil Rights Movement is often dated to sometime in the middle of the 1950s, but the roots of it stretch back much further. The NAACP, which calls itself “the nation's largest and most widely recognized civil rights organization,” was founded near the beginning of the 20th Century, on February 12, 1909. As today’s guest demonstrates, though, Black Americans were exercising civil rights far earlier than that, in many cases even before the Civil War.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Dylan C. Penningroth is a professor of law and history and Associate Dean of the Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at the University of California–Berkeley and author of Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Hopeful Piano,” by Oleg Kyrylkovv, available via the Pixabay license.

The episode image is “Spectators and witnesses on second day of Superior Court during trial of automobile accident case during court week in Granville County Courthouse, Oxford, North Carolina,” by Marion Post Wolcott, photographed in 1939; the photograph is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.

Additional Sources:

• “8 Key Laws That Advanced Civil Rights,” by Mehrunnisa Wani, History.com, January 26, 2022.
• “The Reconstruction Amendments: Official Documents as Social History,” by Eric Foner, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
• “(1865) Reconstruction Amendments, 1865-1870,” BlackPast.
• “14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868),” U.S. National Archives.
• “March 27, 1866: Veto Message on Civil Rights Legislation,” Andrew Johnson, UVA Miller Center.
• “Andrew Johnson and the veto of the Civil Rights Bill,” National Park Service.
• “Grant signs KKK Act into law, April 20, 1871,” by Andrew Glass, Politico, April 20, 2019.
• “Looking back at the Ku Klux Klan Act,” by Nicholas Mosvick, National Constitution Center, April 20, 2021.
• “Reconstruction and Its Aftermath,” Library of Congress The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship.

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When Europeans arrived in the Great Lakes region, they learned from the Indigenous people living there of a route from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, made possible by a portage connecting the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River. That portage, sometimes called Mud Lake, provided both opportunity and challenge to European powers who struggled to use European naval technology in a region better suited to Indigenous birchbark canoes. In the early 19th century, however, the Americans remade the region with major infrastructure projects, finally controlling the portage not with military power but with engineering, and setting the stage for Chicago’s rapid growth as a major metropolis.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. John William Nelson, Assistant Professor of History at Texas Tech University and author of Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is "Water Droplets on the River," composed and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons.

The episode image is a photograph of a statue that depicts members of the Kaskaskia, a tribe of the Illinois Confederation, leading French explorers Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette, to the western end of the Chicago Portage in the summer of 1673. The statue was designed by Chicago area artist Ferdinand Rebechini and erected on April 25-26, 1990. The photograph is under the creative commons license CC BY-SA 2.0 and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

• “Chicago Portage National Historic Site,” National Park Service.
• “STORY 1: Chicago Portage National Historic Site/Sitio Histórico Nacional de Chicago Portage,” Friends of the Chicago River.
• “Portage,” Encyclopedia of Chicago.
• “The Chicago Portage,” Carnegie Mellon University Libraries Digital Collection.
• “Marquette and Jolliet 1673 Expedition,” by Roberta Estes, Native Heritage Project, December 30, 2012.
• “Louis Jolliet & Jacques Marquette [video],” PBS World Explorers.
• “Cadillac, Antoine De La Mothe,” Encyclopedia of Detroit.
• “Chicago’s Mythical French Fort,” by Winstanley Briggs, Encyclopedia of Chicago.
• “Seven Years’ War,” History.com, Originally posted on November 12, 2009 and updated on June 13, 2023.
• “Treaty of Paris (1783),” U.S. National Archives.
• “The Northwest and the Ordinances, 1783-1858,” Library of Congress.
• “The Battle Of The Wabash: The Forgotten Disaster Of The Indian Wars,” by Patrick Feng, The Army Historical Foundation.
• “The Battle Of Fallen Timbers, 20 August 1794,” by Matthew Seelinger, The Army Historical Foundation.
• “History of Fort Dearborn,” Chicagology.
• “How Chicago Transformed From a Midwestern Outpost Town to a Towering City,” by Joshua Salzmann, Smithsonian Magazine, October 12, 2018.
• “Chicago: 150 Years of Flooding and Excrement,” by Whet Moser, Chicago Magazine, April 18, 2013.

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Before Europeans landed in North America, five Indigenous nations around what would become New York State came together to form the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. When the Europeans arrived, the French called them the Iroquois Confederacy, and the English called them the League of Five Nations. Those Five Nations were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas; the Tuscaroras joined the Confederacy in 1722. Some founding father of the United States, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin admired the Haudenosaunee and incorporated their ideas into the U.S. Constitution. Despite that admiration, though, the United States government and the state government of New York did not always treat the Haudenosaunee with respect, and Haudenosaunee leaders had to navigate a difficult terrain in maintaining their sovereignty. Today we’re going to look at the relationship between the Haudenosaunee and the United States through the stories of four individuals: Red Jacket, Ely S. Parker, Harriet Maxwell Converse, and Arthur C. Parker.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. John C. Winters, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern Mississippi and author of The Amazing Iroquois and the Invention of the Empire State.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Falling Leaves (Piano),” by Oleksii Holubiev, from Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha),” painted by Thomas Hicks in 1868; the painting is in the public domain and can be found in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Additional Sources:

• Haudenosaunee Confederacy
• “Haudenosaunee Guide For Educators,” National Museum of the American Indian.
• “The Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Constitution,” by Jennifer Davis, Library of Congress, September 21, 2023.
• “Indian speech, delivered before a gentleman missionary, from Massachusetts, by a chief, commonly called by the white people Red Jacket. His Indian name is Sagu-ua-what-hath, which being interpreted, is Keeper-awake,” Library of Congress, 1805.
• “The Graves of Red Jacket,” Western New York Heritage.
• “Red Jacket Medal Returned to Seneca Nation [video],” WGRZ-TV, May 17, 2021.
• “Ely S. Parker,” Historical Society of the New York Courts.
• April 2, 2015
• in From the Stacks
• “‘We Are All Americans:’ Ely S. Parker at Appomattox Court House,” by Mariam Touba, New York Historical Society, April 2, 2015.
• “Engineer Became Highest Ranking Native American in Union Army,” by David Vergun, DOD News, November 2, 2021.
• “Building to be Named for Ely S. Parker First Indian Commissioner of the BIA Recognized,” U.S. Department of the Interior, December 15, 2000.
• “‘The Great White Mother’: Harriet Maxwell Converse, the Indian Colony of New York City, and the Media, 1885–1903,” by John. C. Winters, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 21(4), 279-300.
• “Harriet Maxwell Converse,” PBS.org.
• “Harriet Maxwell Converse,” Poets.org.
• “Research and Collections of Arthur C. Parker,” New York State Museum.
• “Arthur C. Parker and the Society of the American Indian, 1911-1916,” by S. Carol Berg, New York History, vol. 81, no. 2, 2000, pp. 237–46.

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In 1945, the population of the United States was around 140 million people, and those Americans owned an estimated 45 million guns, or about one gun for every three people. By 2023, the population of the United States stood at just over 330 million people, and according to historical data from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the number of guns produced and imported for the US market since 1899 exceeds 474 million firearms. Even assuming some of those guns have broken or been destroyed or illegally exported, there are easily more guns than people in the United States today. How and why the number of guns rose so precipitously in the US since World War II is our story today.

Joining me to help us learn more about guns in the United States in the second half of the 20th Century is Dr. Andrew C. McKevitt, the John D. Winters Endowed Professor of History at Louisiana Tech University and author of Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Johnny Get Your Gun,” composed by Monroe H. Rosenfeld and performed by Harry C. Browne, in New York on April 19, 1917; the audio is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a Hi-Standard ad from 1957.

Additional sources:

• “How Many Guns Are Circulating in the U.S.?” by Jennifer Mascia and Chip Brownlee, The Trace, Originally posted March 6, 2023, and Updated August 28, 2023.
• “The Mysterious Meaning of the Second Amendment,” by James C. Phillips and Josh Blackman, The Atlantic, February 28, 2020.
• “Timeline of Gun Control in the United States,” by Robert Longley, ThoughtCo, updated on January 08, 2023.
• “Do Black People Have Equal Gun Rights?” by Charles C. W. Cooke, The New York Times, October 25, 2014.
• “Gun Control Is as Old as the Old West,” by Matt Jancer, Smithsonian Magazine, February 5, 2018.
• “The NRA Wasn't Always Against Gun Restrictions,” by Ron Elving, NPR, October 10, 2017.
• “How NRA’s true believers converted a marksmanship group into a mighty gun lobby,” by Joel Achenbach, Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz, Washington Post, January 12, 2013.
• “Opinion: The reality of gun violence in the US is bleak, but history shows it’s not hopeless,” by Julian Zelizer, CNN, April 1, 2023.
• “Firearms and Federal Law: The Gun Control Act of 1968,” by Franklin E. Zimring, The Journal of Legal Studies 4, no. 1 (1975): 133–98.
• “Remarks Upon Signing the Gun Control Act of 1968,” by President Lyndon B. Johnson, The American Presidency Project.
• “The Inside History of How Guns Are Marketed and Sold in America,” by Olivia B. Waxman, Time Magazine, August 19, 2022.
• “The Supreme Court will hear a case that could effectively legalize automatic weapons,” by Ian Millhiser, Vox, November 3, 2023.

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If you go to a grocery store in the United States and pick up a box of cereal, you expect to find a white box on the back of the package with information in Helvetica Black about the food’s macronutrients (things like fat and protein) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). The Nutrition Facts label is so ubiquitous that you may not even notice it. But how did it get there and why does it look the way it does? The history of that label is our story this week.

Joining me to discuss the history of food labeling in the United States is Dr. Xaq Frohlich, Associate Professor of History of Technology in the Department of History at Auburn University, and author of From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Oh, you candy kid,” composed by John L. Golden, with lyrics by Bob Adams, and performed by Ada Jones in 1909; the audio is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox. The episode image is “FDA Label Man,” an ad produced by the FDA for the nutritional label; the image is in the public domain as a United States government work and is available via the FDA Flickr.

Additional Sources:

• “Milestones in U.S. Food and Drug Law,” U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
• “Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906: Topics in Chronicling America,” Lobrary of Congress Research Guides.
• “The Pure Food and Drug Act,” History, Art & Archives, United States House of Representatives.
• “The American Chamber of Horrors [video],” U.S. Food & Drug Administration YouTube Channel, June 29, 2018.
• “The Accidental Poison That Founded the Modern FDA,” by Julian G. West, The Atlantic, January 16, 2018.
• “F. D. A. Proposes Sweeping Change in Food Labeling,” by Richard D. Lyons, The New York Times, January 18, 1973.
• “H.R.3562 - Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990,” Congress.gov.
• “How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Label,” U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
• “The FDA wants to change what counts as ‘healthy’ food. Big food makers say that's unfair.” by Irina Ivanova, CBS Moneywatch, February 27, 2023.
• “FDA to test new package labels that could change how consumers make food choices,” by Madeline Holcombe, CNN Health, June 21, 2023.
• “The FDA is attempting to ban partially hydrogenated oils for good. But what in the world are they?” by Joy Saha, Salon.com, August 16, 2023.
• “Burkey Belser, designer of ubiquitous nutrition facts label, dies at 76,” by Michael S. Rosenwald, Washington Post, September 25, 2023.

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During the 19th Century, the Northern Cheyenne people made a number of treaties with the United States government, but the U.S. repeatedly failed to honor its end of the treaties. In November 1876, the U.S. Army, still fuming over their crushing defeat by the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne at the Battle of Little Bighorn, attacked a village of Northern Cheyenne, destroying 200 lodges and driving the survivors, including women and children, into the freezing cold with few supplies. When the weakened survivors surrendered at Fort Robinson the following spring, believing they would be located on a northern reservation, they were instead forced north to Indian Territory in Oklahoma, where they faced miserable conditions. Finally in 1884, the Northern Cheyenne Reservation was established in what is now southeastern Montana.

Joining me in this episode is writer Gerry Robinson, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, and author of The Cheyenne Story: An Interpretation of Courage.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Little Coyote (Little Wolf) and Morning Star (Dull Knife), Chiefs of the Northern Cheyennes,” photographed by William Henry Jackson in 1873; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• Northern Cheyenne Tribe
• Chief Dull Knife College
• “Northern Cheyenne Reservation Timeline,” Montana Tribal Histories.
• "Beyond "Discovery" Lewis & Clark from an Indigenous Perspective: Journal of American Indian Higher Education," by Richard Littlebear, Tribal College 14(3):11.
• “Treaty & Occupation,” Sand Creek Massacre Foundation.
• “In 1868, Two Nations Made a Treaty, the U.S. Broke It and Plains Indian Tribes are Still Seeking Justice,” by Kimbra Cutlip, Smithsonian Magazine, November 7, 2018.
• “Little Wolf and President Grant,” by Catherine Denial, TeachingHistory.org.
• “Battle of the Little Bighorn,” History.com, Originally posted on December 2, 2009, and updated on December 21, 2020.
• “Treaty With The Cheyenne Tribe, 1825,” Tribal Treaties Database.
• “Treaty Of Fort Laramie With Sioux, Etc., 1851,” Tribal Treaties Database.
• “Treaty With The Arapaho And Cheyenne, 1861,” Tribal Treaties Database.
• “Treaty With The Northern Cheyenne And Northern Arapaho, 1868,” Tribal Treaties Database.

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In 1950, President Harry Truman ordered US troops to the Korean peninsula to help the South Koreans repel the invading North Korean People’s Army, which was supported by the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China. One of the regiments shipped overseas to fight was the 65th Infantry Regiment, the Borinqueneers, made up of soldiers from Puerto Rico. In Korea, the Borinqueneers served heroically, despite harsh conditions and racist treatment.

Joining me in this episode to help us learn more about the 65th Infantry Regiment is writer Talia Aikens-Nuñez, author of the young adult book Men of the 65th: The Borinqueneers of the Korean War.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is “La Borinqueña,” performed by the United States Navy Band in 2003; the audio is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons.The episode image is “Members of the 65th Infantry Regiment pose for a photo after a firefight during the Korean War;“ the photo is by the U.S. Army, in the public domain, and available via the Department of Defense.

Additional sources:

• “Puerto Rico’s 65th Infantry Fought Bravely in Korea—Then Had to Fight for Redemption,” by Iván Román, History.com, Originally published November 20, 2021, and updated August 17, 2023.
• “The Borinqueneers: The Forgotten Heroes of a Forgotten War,” Center for Puerto Rican Studies, CUNY Hunter.
• “The 65th Infantry Regiment: A Storied History,” National Museum of the United States Army.
• “Congress Honors Puerto Rican Regiment for Heroic Korean War Service,” by Shannon Collins, DOD News, October 7, 2016.
• “Bloodied in Battle, Now Getting Their Due,” by David Gonzalez, The New York Times, October 2, 2007.
• “65th Infantry Regiment ‘Borinqueneers’ Highlight Hispanic Heritage Month,”by Tim Oberle, Eighth Army Public Affairs, U.S. Army, September 18, 2015.

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In the late 1960s, as college campuses became hotbeds of liberal protest, conservative college groups, like the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI), the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), and College Republicans, backed by powerful conservative elders and their deep pockets, fought back, staging counter protests, publishing conservative newspapers, taking over student governments, and suing colleges to remain open.

Joining me in this episode to discuss the campus right in more detail is Dr. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, author of Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Row Your Boat,” by The Goldwaters, Sing Folk Songs to Make the Liberals Mad, 1964. The episode image is "Ban SDS sign,” Columbia University Student Strike, April 1968, Office of Public Affairs Protest & Activism Photograph Collection, Collection number: UA#109, University Archives, Columbia University, accessed October 9, 2023.

Additional Sources:

• “The Attack on Yale,” by McGeorge Bundy, The Atlantic, November 1951.
• “Debunking a Longstanding Myth About William F. Buckley,” by Matthew Dallek, POlitico, March 31, 2023.
• “About Us,” Young America’s Foundation.
• “Young Americans for Freedom,” Civil Rights Digital History Project, University of Georgia.
• "Young Americans for Freedom and the Anti-War Movement: Pro-War Encounters with the New Left at the Height of the Vietnam War," by Ethan Swift, Kaplan Senior Essay Prize for Use of Library Special Collections. 2019.
• “About Us,” Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
• “1968: Columbia in Crisis,” Columbia University Libraries.
• “How Columbia’s Student Uprising of 1968 Was Sparked by a Segregated Gym,” by Erin Blakemore, History.com, Originally published April 20, 2018, and updated July 7, 2020.
• “‘The Whole World Is Watching’: An Oral History of the 1968 Columbia Uprising,” by Clara Bingham, Vanity Fair, March 26, 2018.
• “The Right Uses College Campuses as Its Training Grounds,” by Scott W. Stern, Jacobin, August 2023.
• “Critical race theory is just the new buzzword in conservatives’ war on campuses,” by Lauren Lassabe, The Washington Post, July 7, 2021.

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At the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women, a group of women, led by writer Betty Friedan and organizer and attorney Pauli Murray, decided that to make progress they needed to form an independent national civil rights organization for women. Within months, the National Organization for Women had 300 founding members, a slate of officers, and a statement of purpose. By 1974, NOW boasted 40,000 members in over 700 chapters, and today NOW claims hundreds of thousands of members in all 50 states and DC, working toward equal rights for women and girls.

Joining me to discuss the history of NOW is Dr. Katherine Turk, Associate Professor of History and Adjunct Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author of The Women of Now: How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio are “Light Thought Var. 2” and “Vision of Persistence," by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com);Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.The episode image is: “ERA March from Governor's mansion to the capitol - Tallahassee, Florida,” photographed by Donn Dughi; this work is from the Florida Memory Project hosted at the State Archive of Florida, and is released to the public domain in the United States under the terms of Section 257.35(6), Florida Statutes.

Additional Sources:

• “United States President's Commission On The Status Of Women Records,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
• “American Women: Report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, 1963,” Department of Labor.
• “The Powerful, Complicated Legacy of Betty Friedan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique,’” by Jacob Muñoz, Smithsonian Magazine, February 4, 2021.
• “National Organization for Women, ‘Statement of Purpose’ (1966),” The American Yawp Reader.
• “National Organization for Women (NOW) founding documents, 1966–1968,” National Organization for Women Records, Schlesinger Library
• “National Organization for Women Founder on Group's 50th Anniversary and Finding Success in Anger,” by Olivia B. Waxman, Time Magazine, June 30, 2016.
• “Feminist Factions United and Filled the Streets for This Historic March,” by Maggie Doherty, The New York Times, Originally published August 26, 2020, and updated September 3, 2020.
• “The Equal Rights Amendment: The Most Popular Never-Ratified Amendment,” by Christine Blackerby, National Archives Education Updates, December 5, 2013.
• “How Phyllis Schlafly Derailed the Equal Rights Amendment,” by Lesley Kennedy, History.com, Originally published March 19, 2020, and updated September 29, 2023.
• “The 1978 Equal Rights Amendment March,” by Henry Kokkeler, Boundary Stones, WETA, April 12, 2022.
• National Organization for Women

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When farmer John Durfee found the body of a local factory girl hanging from a fence post on his property on the morning of December 21, 1832, he and the rest of the townspeople assumed she had died by suicide. But a cryptic note she had left among her possessions pointed the investigation in a different direction, and the ensuing murder trial captured the public imagination.

Joining me to discuss the murder of Maria Cornell and the shifting cultural milieu of New England in the 1830s is Dr. Bruce Dorsey, Professor of History at Swarthmore College and author of Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime That Captivated a Nation.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Midnight,” by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay; available for use under the Pixabay License. The episode image is “A very bad man - Ephraim Kingsbury Avery,” published by Henry Robinson & Company in 1833; the image is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Additional Sources:

• “Sarah Maria Cornell,” The Town & the City: Lowell before and after The Civil War, University of Massachusetts Lowell Library.
• “Trial of Rev. Mr. Avery ; a full report of the trial of Ephraim K. Avery, charged with the murder of Sarah Maria Cornell : before the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, at a special term in Newport, held in May, 1833 ; Avery's trial ; Additional medical testimony by Professor Channing on the part of the defendant, and Dr. William Turner, for the government,” reported by Benjamin F. Hallett, 1832, Harvard Library.
• “Letters of the law : the trial of E. K. Avery for the murder of Sarah M. Cornell,” by J. Barbour, Law Text Culture, 2, 1995, 118-133.
• “Religious Revivals and Revivalism in 1830s New England,” TeachUSHistory.org.
• "The Second Great Awakening and the Making of Modern America," by Kerry Irish, Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics. 78, 2018.
• “Religion and Reform,” The American Yawp.
• “The Mill Girls of Lowell,” National Park Service.

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Just days after British troops captured New York City from General Washington and his army in September 1776, fire broke out, destroying a fifth of the city. The British blamed rebels who had remained hidden in Manhattan, but Washington, who had been ordered by Congress to leave the city standing on his retreat, never claimed responsibility, though he complained that the blaze hadn’t caused more destruction. So who did start the fire and why?

Joining me this week to discuss the New York fire and the question of who started it is Dr. Benjamin Carp, Professor and Daniel M. Lyons Chair of History at Brooklyn College, and author ofThe Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The poetry is from selections of “Conflagration: A Poem,” Printed in New York from High Gaine in 1780 and performed by Theodore Weflen-Pollock. The episode image is "Representation du Feu terrible a Nouvelle Yorck," The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library; the image is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

• “Timeline: The American Revolution,” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
• “The American Revolution: A timeline of George Washington's military and political career during the American Revolution, 1774-1783,” George Washington Papers, Library of Congress.
• “The Burning of Charlestown: Only Two Spoons Remained for Relief Ellery,” by Massachusetts Historical Society, Charlestown Patriot Bridge, June 17, 2020.
• "The Burning of Falmouth, 1775: A Case Study in British Imperial Pacification," by Donald A. Yerxa, Maine History 14, 3 (1975): 119-161. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal/vol14/ iss3/3
• “New York City’s Forgotten Past,” by Erik Peter Axelson, HistoryNet, December 9, 2019.
• “Did George Washington Order Rebels to Burn New York City in 1776?” by Erik Ofgang, Smithsonian Magazine, May 11, 2023.
• “From George Washington to Lund Washington, 6 October 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives.

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RuPaul’s Drag Race first aired on TV in 2009, but the New York City drag scene that launched RuPaul started over a century earlier. From drag balls to Wigstock, New York has long been considered the capital of drag culture. Joining me in this episode to discuss New York City’s rich history of drag is writer Elyssa Maxx Goodman, author of Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “The New York Glide,” written by Tim Delaney and performed by Ethel Waters and Albury’s Blue & Jazz Seven in May 1921; the performance is in the public domain. The episode image is Lady Bunny, photographed by Tai Seef during Wigstock 2001, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

“How Drag Queens Have Sashayed Their Way Through History,” by Sam Sanders and Josh Axelrod, NPR, June 27, 2019.

“The US has a rich drag history. Here’s why the art form will likely outlast attempts to restrict it,” by Scottie Andrew, CNN, April 29, 2023.

“From police raids to pop culture: The early history of modern drag,” by Emily Martin, National Geographic, June 2, 2023.

“The Evolution of Drag: A History of Self-Expressionism,” by Gaelle Abou Nasr, Arcadia, December 12, 2021.

“InQueery: Trixie Mattel Breaks Down the History of ‘Drag,’” Them, September 20, 2018.

“Julian Eltinge was the most famous drag queen ever. What happened? [video]”, PBS American Masters, February 18, 2021.

“A century ago, this star ‘female impersonator’ made men swoon,” by Randy Dotinga, The Washington Post, June 24, 2023.

“Mob Queens [podcast],” by Jessica Bendinger & Michael Seligman.

“Stonewall Riots,” History.com, Originally posted May 31, 2017, and updated June 23, 2023.

“Marsha Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and the history of Pride Month,” Smithsonian, June 7, 2021.

“Before There Was ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ There Was Wigstock,” by Michael Appeler, Variety, May 6, 2019.

“The Pyramid Club: New York City’s First Drag Landmark,” by Dawson Knick, Village Preservation, July 25, 2019.

“Wigstock Returns From the Dead,” by Jacob Bernstein, The New York Times, August 15, 2018.

“New Heights for a Diva: RuPaul's TV Talk Show,” by Andrea Higbie, The New York Times, October 20, 1996.

“Behind the Rise of RuPaul’s Drag Race,” by Maria Elena Fernandez, Variety, August 22, 2017.

“There Has Never Been a Show Like RuPaul’s Drag Race,” by David Canfield, Vanity Fair, August 27, 2021.

“RuPaul Shares the Origin of His Name and Drag Persona [video],” Late Night with Seth Meyers, February 12, 2020.

“NYPD Commissioner Apologizes For 'Oppressive' 1969 Raid On Stonewall Inn,” by Bobby Allyn and Dani Matias, NPR, June 6, 2019.

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One of the best known poets of Revolutionary New England was an enslaved Black girl named Phillis Wheatley, who was only emancipated after she published a book of 39 of her poems in London. Wheatley, who met with Benjamin Franklin and corresponded with George Washington, was the first person of African descent to publish a book in English. Wheatley achieved literary success and helped drive the abolition movement, but she died young and penniless, and many of her poems were lost to history. Joining me to discuss Phillis Wheatley is Dr. David Waldstreicher, Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center and author of The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode performance is poetry of Phillis Wheatley, read by Laurice Roberts for this podcast; the poems are in the public domain. The music is “Morning Dew” by Julius H. from Pixabay and is used in accordance with the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a portrait of Phillis Wheatley, possibly painted by Scipio Moorhead, which was used as the frontispiece for her 1773 book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral; the portrait is available via the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution and is  in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

“Phillis Wheatley: The unsung Black poet who shaped the US,” by Robin Catalano, BBC Rediscovering America, February 21, 2023.

“How Phillis Wheatley Was Recovered Through History,” by Elizabeth Winkler, The New Yorker, July 30, 2020.

“The Multiple Truths in the Works of the Enslaved Poet Phillis Wheatley,” by drea brown, Smithsonian Magazine, June 24, 2020.

“The Great American Poet Who Was Named After a Slave Ship,” by Tiya Miles, The Atlantic, April 22, 2023.

“Phillis Wheatley: 1753–1784,” Poetry Foundation.

“Phillis Wheatley: Her Life, Poetry, and Legacy,” by Stephanie Sheridan, National Portrait Gallery Face to Face Blog.

Phillis Wheatley Historical Society

“Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” by Phillis Wheatley, available via Project Gutenberg

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One of the biggest stars in Prohibition Age New York was blues singer Gladys Bentley, who caused a stir in Harlem, wearing a top hat and tails, flirting with women in the audience, and singing raunchy lyrics. Despite Bentley’s phenomenal talent, the repeal of Prohibition and the end of the jazz age led to waning interest in the type of bawdy performance for which she was known. Despite attempts to change with the times, Bentley was never again able to reach the level of fame she had once enjoyed. Joining me in this episode to discuss Gladys Bentley and queer Black women performers in Prohibition Age New York is Dr. Cookie Woolner, Associate Professor of History at the University of Memphis and author of The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire before Stonewall. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Them There Eyes,” performed by Gladys Bentley on You Bet Your Life on May 15, 1958. The episode image is a photo of Gladys Bentley on a card distributed by the Harry Walker Agency, with a caption that reads: “America's Greatest Sepia Player -- Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs;” the photo is in the Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

“I am Woman Again,” by Gladys Bentley, Ebony Magazine, August 1952.

“Gladys Bentley: Gender-Bending Performer and Musician [video],” PBS American Masters Unladylike2020, June 2, 2020.

“The Great Blues Singer Gladys Bentley Broke All the Rules,” by Haleema Shah, Smithsonian Magazine, March 14, 2019.

“Overlooked – Gladys Bentley,” by Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times, 2019.

“Honoring Notorious Gladys Bentley,” by Irene Monroe, HuffPost, Posted April 14, 2010 and updated May 25, 2011.

“Blues Singer Gladys Bentley Broke Ground With Marriage to a Woman in 1931,” by Steven J. Niven, The Root, February 11, 2015.

“Gladys Bentley on ‘You Bet Your Life’ [video],” Aired on May 15, 1958; posted on YouTube by Joel Chaidez on December 18, 2009.

“Gladys Bentley (feat. Eddie Lang) How Much Can I Stand? (1928) [video],” Audio recorded on November 2, 1928 and issued as a single by OKeh in 1929; posted on YouTube by randomandrare on April 16, 2010.

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As a child in Los Angeles, Wong Liu Tsong knew she wanted to be an actress. Adopting the screen name Anna May Wong and dropping out of school to pursue her passion, Wong landed her first lead role at age 17. Despite Hollywood racism that would limit the types of roles she would receive, Wong’s impressive career spanned over 60 films, in addition to stage and television work, and she was the first Asian American woman to be awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Joining me in this episode is Dr. Yunte Huang, Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Anna May Wong singing in three languages -Rudy Vallee Radio Show from July 11, 1935,” posted on YouTube by Robert Fells, who attributes the original discs to Jerry Haendiges. The episode image is a press photograph of Anna May Wong, from: Press photographs of Anna May Wong, 1930s, Postcards and Press Photographs of Anna May Wong, circa 1930-1981, MS Thr 2095 Case 1, Folder 4. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Additional Sources:

“Anna May Wong, 1905-1961,” by Kerri Lee Alexander, National Women’s History Museum.

“Life Story: Anna May Wong (1905–1961): The First Asian American Movie Star,” Women and the American Story, New York Historical Society.

“Anna May Wong: Trendsetting Movie Star and Fashion Icon / 1905-1961 [video],” UNLADYLIKE2020.

“Actress Anna May Wong Championed Asian American Representation in More than 60 Films,” by Chelsea Cozad, Smithsonian, October 24, 2022.

“Anna May Wong: the legacy of a groundbreaking Asian American star,” by Pamela Hutchinson, The Guardian, October 19, 2022.

“The True Story of Anna May Wong and The Good Earth,” by Yohana Desta, Vanity Fair, May 1, 2020.

“Lucy Liu Speaks Out for More Diversity at Hollywood Walk of Fame,” by Jordan Moreau, Variety, May 1, 2019.

“Anna May Wong Will Be the First Asian American on U.S. Currency,” by Soumya Karlamangla, New York Times, October 18, 2022.

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When Anna Rosenberg Hoffman died in 1983, the New York Times called her “one of the most influential women in the country's public affairs for a quarter of a century.” A skilled labor mediator and advisor to four U.S. presidents, Rosenberg, a Jewish immigrant from Hungary, stood up to Senator Joe McCarthy and was confirmed by the Senate as Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1950, making her the then-highest ranking woman in the history of the Department of Defense. It was only one of many firsts in her storied career. Joining me in this episode to help tell the story of Anna Rosenberg is history teacher and writer Christopher C. Gorham, author of The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Heartwarming," composed and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Portrait of Anna M. Rosenberg, Assistant Secretary of Defense, at her desk in the Pentagon,” taken on February 2, 1951, credit: United States Army; the image is in the PUblic Domain and is available via the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.

Additional Sources:

“One of the most important women in American history has been forgotten,” by Christopher C. Gorham, The Washington Post, May 30, 2023.

“Papers of Anna Rosenberg Hoffman, 1870-1983,” Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

“MANPOWER: The Buffalo Plan,” Time Magazine, September 27, 1943.

“Senators Confirm Anna M. Rosenberg,” The New York Times, December 22, 1950.

“Lessons of the Anna M. Rosenberg Hearings: Where Congressional Investigations Go Wrong,” by Herrymon Maurer, Commentary, May 1951.

“Anna Rosenberg Hoffman Dead; Consultant And 50's Defense Aide,” by Eric Pace, The New York Times, May 10, 1983.

"Anna M. Rosenberg, an ‘Honorary Man,’" by Anna Kasten Nelson, The Journal of Military History 68, no. 1 (2004): 133-161.

“Anna M. Rosenberg and Women in Defense after World War II,” by Stephanie Hinnershitz, National WWII Museum, March 18, 2022.

“Anna M. Rosenberg, Social Security History.

“Anna Rosenberg,” by Susan L. Tananbaum, The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.

“Anna M. Rosenberg (1902 - 1983),” Jewish Virtual Library.

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In the early 20th century, career options for Black workers were limited, and the jobs often came with low pay and poor conditions. Ironically, because they were concentrated in certain jobs, Black workers  sometimes monopolized those jobs and had collective power to demand better conditions and higher pay. The Pullman Company, founded in 1862, hired only Black men to serve as porters on Pullman cars, since George M. Pullman thought that formerly enslaved men would know how to be good, invisible servants and that they would work for low wages. In 1925, the Pullman Porters formed their own union, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, with A. Philip Randolph serving as president. After years of struggle, in 1935, the Pullman Company finally recognized the union, and it was granted a charter by the American Federation of Labor (AFL), making the Brotherhood the first Black union it accepted.  Joining me in this episode to help us learn about the Black working class is historian Dr. Blair L. M. Kelley, the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the incoming director of the Center for the Study of the American South and author of Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Pullman Porter Blues,” music and lyrics by Clifford Ulrich and Burton Hamilton; performed by Clarence Williams on September 30, 1921; the recording is in the public domain.The episode image is: “J.W. Mays, Pullman car porter,” photographed by C.M. Bell, 1894; the photograph is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress.

Additional Sources:

“George Pullman: His Impact on the Railroad Industry, Labor, and American Life in the Nineteenth Century,” by Rosanne Lichatin,” History Resources, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. 

“The Rise and Fall of the Sleeping Car King,” by Jack Kelly, Smithsonian Magazine, January 11, 2019.

“The Pullman Strike, by Richard Schneirov, Northern Illinois University Digital Library.

“Pullman Porters,” History.com, Originally published February 11, 2019, and updated October 8, 2021.

“The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters,” by Brittany Hutchinson, Chicago History Museum.

“Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (1925-1978),” by Daren Salter, BlackPast, November 24, 2007.

“A. Philip Randolph Was Once “the Most Dangerous Negro in America,” by Peter Dreier, Jacobin, January 31, 2023.

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In 1894, Mary P. Evans, wrote in the Woman’s Era, a Black women’s magazine, that exercise: “enables you to keep in the best condition for work with the hands or with the brain… It prepares you to meet disappointment, sorrow, ill treatment, and great suffering as the strong, courageous and splendid woman meets them. It is a great aid to clear, quick, and right thinking.” She wasn’t the only Black woman of the day encouraging Black women and girls to exercise as a way of improving not just themselves but also the whole race. Despite the lack of facilities and obstacles in their way, Black women and girls aspired to physical fitness. In 2010, Michelle Obama, the first Black First Lady of the United States echoed Mary P. Evans, encouraging everyone to pursue physical fitness with the “Let’s Move” campaign.  Joining me in this episode is Dr. Ava Purkiss, assistant professor of women's and gender studies and American culture at the University of Michigan and author of Fit Citizens: A History of Black Women's Exercise from Post-Reconstruction to Postwar America. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is Sunburst Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Nesrality from Pixabay and is used via the Pixabay Content License.The episode image is “Atlanta University, Founder's Day Drill,” from The Harmon Foundation Collection: Kenneth Space Photographs of the Activities of Southern Black Americans and available in the public domain via the National Archives (NAID: 26174852; Local ID: H-HS-2-214).

Additional Sources:

“First Lady Michelle Obama Launches Let's Move: America's Move to Raise a Healthier Generation of Kids,” White House Press Release, February 9, 2010.

“African Americans and the YMCA (Archives and Special Collections),” University of Minnesota LIbraries.

“A Brief History Of Diversity And Inclusion At The Y,” The YMCA of San Diego County, July 27, 2017.

“Our History,” Boston University College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College.

“Olivia A. Davidson (1854-1889),” by Nana Lawson Bush, BlackPast, January 19, 2007.

“Physical Education Pioneer Maryrose Reeves Allen Dies,” The Washington Post, January 17, 1992.

“The 'Hidden Figures' of Physical Education: Black Women Who Paved the Way in PE,” by Tara B. Blackshear and Brian Culp, Momentum magazine, co-authors, February 15, 2022.

“Addressing Racism In The Fitness Industry Requires Understanding Its Roots,” by Rodney J. Morris and Pamela Kufahl, Club Industry, October 6, 2020.

“A healthful legacy: Michelle Obama looks to the future of ‘Let’s Move,’” by Krissah Thompson and Tim Carman, The Washington Post, May 3, 2015.

Tweet by Michele Obama as First Lady, May 19, 2015. 

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In the American colonies and then in the antebellum United States, the legal system reinforced the power and authority of slaveholders by allowing them to physically abuse the people they enslaved while severely punishing enslaved people for even minor offenses. Some enslaved women, who could find no justice in the courts, sought their own justice through lethal resistance, murdering their enslavers.  Joining me now to help us understand the enslaved women who chose lethal resistance, what drove them, and why these stories are important to tell, is Dr. Nikki M. Taylor, Professor of History at Howard University and author of several books, including Brooding over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Desire for Freedom” by Lexin_Music from Pixabay and is used via the Pixabay Content License. The image is “Silhouette portrait of slave Bietja,” by Jan Brandes; it is available in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner's Community, by Vanessa M. Holden, University of Illinois Press, 2021.

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, by Rebecca Hall, Simon & Schuster, 2021.

“Poetry of Defiance: How the Enslaved Resisted,” Zinn Education Project Teaching Activity, by Adam Sanchez.

“Slave codes,” National Park Service.

“The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice,” by William Goodell, 1853, Published in Learning for Justice.

“Hidden Voices: Enslaved Women in the Lowcountry and U.S. South,” The Lowcountry Digital History Initiative (LDHI).

"Thrice Condemned: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Practice of Leniency in Antebellum Virginia Courts," by Tamika Y. Nunley, Journal of Southern History 87, no. 1 (2021): 5-34. 

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Sometime in the mid-1780s, Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable, a Black man from Saint-Domingue, and his Potawatomi wife, Kitihawa, settled with their family on a swampy site near Lake Michigan called Eschecagou, “land of the wild onions.” The homestead and trading post they built on the mouth of the Chicago River, with a comfortably appointed cabin, workshop, bake house, stable, smokehouse, and more, was the first settlement on what would become the city of Chicago. Their importance was long forgotten, but in 2006, the Chicago City Council belatedly voted to amend the Municipal Code of Chicago to add DuSable as the city’s official founder.  Joining me in this episode is Dr. Courtney P. Joseph, Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Lake Forest College who is writing a book titled DuSable’s Diaspora: Haiti, Blackness, and Belonging in Chicago. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is: “Chicago (that Toddling Town),” written by Fred Fisher and performed by Jazz-Bo’s Carolina Serenaders in 1922; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Internet Archive. The episode image is a photograph of the bust of DuSable just north of DuSable Bridge in Chicago; the bust was created by Erik Blome in 2009; the photograph was taken by Matthew Weflen on June 17, 2023, and is used with permission.

Organizations:

DuSable Heritage Association

Friends of the Park

DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center

Sources:

“Chicago's Authentic Founder: Jean Baptiste Point Dusable Or Haitian Secret Agent In The Old Northwest Outpost 1745-1818,” by Marc Rosier, Trafford Publishing, 2015.

“Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the First Chicagoan,” by Thomas A. Meehan, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 56, No. 3, Emancipation Centennial Issue (Autumn, 1963), pp. 439-453.

“The Father of Chicago: Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable,” by John R. Schmidt, WBEZ Chicago, August 8, 2011.

“'The First White Man in Chicago Was a Negro'?” by Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Root, September 30, 2013.

“Do Chicagoans know DuSable had a Native American wife? We should celebrate her, too,” by Laura Washington, Chicago Sun-Times, June 13, 2021.

“The Black Founder of Chicago: Point du Sable | Black History Explainer [video],” Unique Coloring, 3,027 views  Oct 1, 2022.

“The Story of Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable [video],” Field Museum, 

“Who Is Jean Baptiste Point du Sable? [video],” 77 Flavors of Chicago, February 6, 2023.

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When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men were endowed with the rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” he did not have in mind the rights of the hundreds of human beings he enslaved. But the enslaved population of the United States, and the abolitionists who supported them, like Frederick Douglass and John Brown, adopted the American symbols of revolution and freedom in their own fight for liberty.   Joining me on this episode to discuss the power of symbols like the flag and Independence Day is historian Dr. Matthew Clavin, Professor of History at the University of Houston and author of Symbols of Freedom: Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is Frederick Douglass’s speech, “What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” originally delivered on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, and performed by Chicago actor Anthony C. Brown. The mid-episode music is “Dramatic Atmosphere with Piano and Violin,” byUNIVERSFIELD from Pixabay. The episode image is: "Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave, on an English platform, denouncing slaveholders and their religious abettors," 1852, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.

Additional Sources:

“July Fourth used to be a protest holiday for enslaved Americans,” by Matt Clavin, The Washington Post, July 3, 2023.

“Declaration of Independence: A Transcription,” National Archives.

“These are the 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence,” by Colman Andrews, USA Today, July 3, 2019.

“Today in History - July 4: Independence Day” Library of Congress.

“Who Wrote the Declaration of Independence?” by Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, July 2, 2016.

“Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776, ‘Had a Declaration…’ [electronic edition],” Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society. 

“Practical Considerations Founded on the Scriptures: Relative to the Slave Population of South-Carolina,” by Frederick Dalcho, 1823.

“'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?': The History of Frederick Douglass' Searing Independence Day Oration,” by Olivia B. Waxman, Time Magazine, Originally published July 3, 2019, Updated June 26, 2020.

“A Nation's Story: ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’” Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture.

“Frederick Douglass Knew What False Patriotism Was,” by Esau McCaulley, The New York Times, July 3, 2023.

“John Brown’s Passionate ‘Declaration of Liberty,’ Written on a Lengthy Scroll,” by Rebecca Onion, Slate: The Vault, December 2, 2013.

“The Harpers Ferry 'Rising' That Hastened Civil War,” WBEZ Chicago, October 22, 2011.

“John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry,” History.com, Originally published November 13, 2009, Updated October 14, 2020.

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In September 1970, commandos from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked five planes, landing three of them near Zarqua, Jordan, at a remote desert airstrip called Dawson’s Field, which the commandos renamed Revolution Airport. While they held hundreds of passengers and flight crew hostage in the desert, the PFLP issued their demands for release of Palestinian militants who were imprisoned in Europe.  Joining me on this episode to help us understand more is American historian Prof. Martha Hodes, who was a 12-year-old passenger on one of the planes, flying with her 13-year-old sister, Catherine. Dr. Hodes is Professor of History at New York University and the author of My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Calm Piano Dramatic” by AleXZavesa and is available for use via Pixabay. The episode image is “Pan Am Boeing 747-121 N736PA,” by Rob Russell, CC BY 2.0. 

Additional Sources:

“History of the Question of Palestine,” United Nations.

“Creation of Israel, 1948,” Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State.

“Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP),” BBC, November 18, 2014.

“Skyjackings: What's Being Done And How Passengers React,” by John Brannon Albright, The New York Times, June 21, 1970.

“A Brief History of Airplane Hijackings, From the Cold War to D.B. Cooper,” by Janet Bednarek, The Conversation, Smithsonian Magazine, July 18, 2022.

“Leila Khaled freed after US pressure,” The Guardian, January 1, 2001.

“An Infamous Hijacking, Revisited Through a Child’s Eyes,” by Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times, June 1, 2023.

“1970 Hijackings,” PBS American Experience.

“Terror in Black September: The First Eyewitness Account of the Infamous 1970 Hijackings,” by David Raab, Palgrave Macmillan, September 4, 2007.

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Over 350,000 African American men joined the United States military during World War I, serving valiantly despite discrimination and slander. Historian and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois had hoped that their patriotism would help them gain respect and equality, but after the war it was quickly evident that would not be the case. Du Bois spent the next several decades attempting to tell the full story of Black soldiers in the Great War, but despite a vast archive of materials entrusted to him and his own towering intellect, Du Bois was never able to craft a coherent narrative of their participation.  Joining me in this episode to discuss Du Bois and his relationship with World War I is Dr. Chad L. WIlliams, the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University, and the author of The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “All Of No Man's Land Is Ours,” written by James Europe and Noble Sissle, with vocals by Noble Sissle; the song was recorded around March 14, 1919 and is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is “The famous 369th arrive in New York City,” photographed by Paul Thompson on February 26, 1919; the image is in the public domain and is available via the National Archives (National Archives Identifier: 26431290; Local Identifier: 165-WW-127A-12).

Additional Sources:

“W.E.B. Du Bois,” NAACP. 

"Du Bois, W. E. B.," by Thomas C. Holt, African American National Biography. Ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. New York: Oxford UP, 2008.

"W. E. B. Du Bois in Georgia," by Derrick Alridge,  New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Jul 21, 2020. 

“Niagara Movement,” History.com, Originally posted December 2, 2009 and updated February 24, 2021.

“U.S. Entry into World War I, 1917,” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State.

“The African Roots of War,” by W. E. B. Du Bois, The Atlantic, May 1915.

“Why Frederick Douglass Wanted Black Men to Fight in the Civil War,” by Farrell Evans, History.com, Originally posted February 8, 2021 and updated November 22, 2022.

“Patriotism Despite Segregation: African-American Participation During World War I,” The Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs.

“African Americans in the Military during World War I,” National Archives.

“The 93rd Division During the Meuse-Argonne Offensive,” Pritzker Military Museum & Library.

“African-American Soldiers in World War I: The 92nd and 93rd Divisions,” EdSiteMent, The National Endowment for the Humanities

“W. E. B. Du Bois, World War I, and the Question of Failure,” by Chad Williams, Black Perspectives, February 19, 2018.

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During World War II, over 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were US citizens, were forcibly removed from their homes in California, Washington, and Oregon, and imprisoned in relocation centers, small towns surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. The War Relocation Authority, the government agency created by FDR that oversaw the mass relocation and internment, appointed a project attorney for each of the 10 camps. These white attorneys served the conflicted position of both advising the project director and running a legal aid for the Japanese American prisoners.  Joining me in this episode is legal historian Eric L. Muller, the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor of Law in Jurisprudence and Ethics at the University of North Carolina School of Law and author of Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe: Complicity and Conscience in America's World War II Concentration Camps. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Longing for Japan,” by srento, licensed for use via Pond5. The episode image is “Lone Pine, Calif. Apr. 1942. Evacuees of Japanese ancestry arriving by train and awaiting buses for Manzanar, a War Relocation Authority center,” by Clem Albers, from April 1, 1942; the photograph is housed in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-73157), with no known restrictions on publication.

Additional Sources:

“Japanese American Incarceration During World War II,” DocsTeach, Created by the National Archives.

“FDR sets up War Relocation Authority , March 18, 1942,” by Andrew Glass, Politico, March 18, 2018.

“How Japanese American Incarceration Was Entangled With Indigenous Dispossession,” by Hana Maruyama, KCET, August 18, 2022.

“The Injustice of Japanese-American Internment Camps Resonates Strongly to This Day,” by T. A. Frail, Smithsonian Magazine, January 2017.

“She fought the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and won,” by Lori Aratani, The Washington Post, December 18, 2019.

“The dangerous economics of racial resentment during World War II,” by Gwynn Guilford, Quartz, February 13, 2018.

“Before people start invoking Japanese American internment, they should remember what it was like,” by Jeff Guo, The Washington Post, November 18, 2015.

“Bitter Harvest,” by A. V. Krebs, The Washington Post, February 2, 1992.

Related Episodes:

The US-Born Japanese Americans (Nisei) who Migrated to Japan

Patsy Mink

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As many as two million Irish people relocated to North America during the Great Hunger in the mid-19th Century. Even after the famine had ended, Irish families continued to send their teenaged and 20-something children to the United States to earn money to mail back to Ireland. In many immigrant groups, it was single men who immigrated to the US in search of work, but single Irish women, especially young women, came to the US in huge numbers. Between 1851 and 1910 the ratio of men to women arriving in New York from Ireland was roughly equal. Irish women often took jobs in domestic service, drawn by the provided housing, food, and clothing, which allowed them to send the bulk of their earnings back home to Ireland.   Joining me to discuss Irish immigrant women in the late 19th Century is Irish poet Vona Groarke, author of Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The transitional audio is “My Irish maid,” composed by Max Hoffmann and performed by Billy Murray; Inclusion of the recording in the National Jukebox, courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment. The episode image is: “New York City, Irish depositors of the Emigrant Savings Bank withdrawing money to send to their suffering relatives in the old country,” Illustration  in: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, v. 50, no. 1275 (March 13, 1880), p. 29; courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; no known restrictions on publication.

Additional Sources:

“Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History: Irish,” Library of Congress.

“The Great Hunger: What was the Irish potato famine? How was Queen Victoria involved, how many people died and when did it happen?” by Neal Baker, The Sun, August 25, 2017.

“The Potato Famine and Irish Immigration to America,” Constitutional Rights Foundation, Winter 2020 (Volume 26, No. 2).  

“Immigrant Irishwomen and maternity services in New York and Boston, 1860–1911,” by Ciara Breathnach, Med Hist. 2022 Jan;66(1):3–23.

“‘Bridgets’: Irish Domestic Servants in New York,” by Rikki Schlott-Gibeaux, New York Genealogical & Biographical Society, September 25, 2020.

“The Irish Girl and the American Letter: Irish immigrants in 19th Century America,” by Martin Ford, The Irish Story, November 17, 2018.

“Who’s Your Granny: The Story of Irish Bridget,” by Lori Lander Murphy, Irish Philadelphia, June 26, 2020.

“The Irish-American population is seven times larger than Ireland,” by Sarah Kliff, The Washington Post, March 17, 2013.

“Irish Free State declared,” History.com.

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Americans in the 1950s, yearning to return to normalcy after the Great Depression and World War II, got married, had lots of kids, and used their newly middle-class status to buy cookie-cutter houses in the suburbs. But not everyone conformed to the white middle class American Dream. Black Americans were largely excluded from suburban housing and the benefits of the GI Bill; girls who became pregnant out of wedlock were hidden from sight; children with developmental disabilities were sent to institutions; and gay men hid their homosexual attractions for fear of ostracization, harassment, and even legal consequences. The secrets they kept took a toll on the families who kept them. Joining me to discuss the secrets of the 1950s is Dr. Margaret K. Nelson, Hepburn Professor Emerita of Sociology at Middlebury College and author of Keeping Family Secrets: Shame and Silence in Memoirs from the 1950s. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The transition audio is “The Great American Dream,” by Vaughn Monroe and His Orchestra, 1950, available in the Public Domain via Archive. Org. The episode image is “1950s family Gloucester Massachusetts USA 5336436883,” via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Additional Sources:

“The Lingering Legacy of America’s First Cookie-Cutter Suburb,” by Winnie Lee, Atlas Obscura, July 10, 2020.

“The White Negro (Superficial Reflections on the Hipster),” by Norman Mailer, Dissent Magazine, Summer 1957.

“1950s: Pop Culture Explodes In A Decade Of Conformity,” Encyclopedia.com.

“These Rebels Fought Conformity in 1950s America—and Are Still Making a Difference Today,” by James R. Gaines, Time Magazine, February 3, 2022.

“How the GI Bill's Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans,” by Erin Blakemore, History.com, June 21, 2019.

“An analysis of out-of-wedlock births in the United States,” by George A. Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen, Brookings, August 1, 1996.

“The curious survival of the US Communist Party,” by Aidan Lewis, BBC News, Mary 1, 2014.

“The Baby in the Suitcase: In 1950s America, unwed pregnancy was a sociological crime,” by Dale M. Brumfield, Lessons from History, December 6, 2019.

“1950s - Explore a Decade in LGBTQ History,” Victory Institute.

“The Rise of the Suburbs,” US History II (American Yawp)

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In 1970, writer Gordon Merrick published The Lord Won’t Mind, advertised as “the first homosexual novel with a happy ending,” his fifth novel but first to focus on a gay romance story. The novel was a hit and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 16 weeks. Critics dismissed the work as fantastical, but Merrick, who had been a Broadway actor, newspaper reporter, and American spy before turning novelist, was writing what he knew. Despite his commercial success and enduring fan base, Merrick’s contributions have been ignored and forgotten. Joining me to help us understand Gordon Merrick and his writing is Dr. Joseph Ortiz, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso and author of the 2022 book, Gordon Merrick and the Great Gay American Novel. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is the original cover from the 1970 publication of The Lord Won’t Mind.

Additional Sources:

“Gordon Merrick, 71, Reporter and Novelist,” The New York Times, April 23, 1988.

“Gordon Merrick (1916 - 1988),” The Legacy Project.

“The Curious Case of Gordon Merrick,” by Andrew Holleran, The Gay & Lesbian Review.

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As a girl born in 1883 to a family who couldn’t afford to send her to college, Elsie Robinson had limited options. To escape the drudgery of small-town life and then a stifling marriage, Elsie wrote. And wrote. And wrote. When her asthmatic son was home sick from school, she wrote and illustrated stories to entertain him. When she needed to make money to support herself and her son after her divorce, she wrote again. Eventually, her prolific writing caught the attention of the Hearst media empire, and Elsie became the most-read woman writer in America and the highest-paid woman writer in the Hearst organization. But today, few people remember Elsie Robinson or her writing. Joining me to help us learn more about Elsie Robinson is writer Allison Gilbert, co-author of Listen, World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America's Most-Read Woman. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Elsie Robinson, writer and columnist,” from the San Francisco Examiner, available via the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley, and in the Public Domain.

Additional Sources:

Elsie Robinson

“Elsie Robinson (1883-1956),” by Allison Gilbert, National Women’s HIstory Museum.

“ELSIE ROBINSON, COLUMNIST, DIES; Author of Syndicated 'Listen World' for King Features Succumbs at Age of 73,” The New York Times, September 9, 1956.

“Listen, Benicia: Famed syndicated columnist and city native Elsie Robinson will be focus of Capitol event,” by Nick Sestanovich, Benicia Herald, September 7, 2017.

“Pain,” by Elsie Robinson, Poetry Nook.

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Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, much of the focus of reproductive rights organizing in the US was done in the states, and nowhere was that more effective than in New York, where leftist feminists in groups like Redstockings and more mainstream activists in groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW) together pushed the state legislature to enact the most liberal abortion law in the country by early 1970. The wide range of reproductive rights activism in New York also included the headquarters for both the Clergy Consultation Service, which helped women find safe abortion care, and the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse (CESA), which fought the often deceptive population control inflicted on women of color.  Joining me to help us understand more about the push for reproductive rights in New York in the 1960s and 1970s is Dr. Felicia Kornbluh, a Professor of History and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Vermont, and the author of the upcoming book, A Woman's Life Is a Human Life: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Betty Friedan, president of the National Organization for Women, tells reporters in the New York State Assembly lobby of the groups intention to ‘put sex into section I of the New York constitution,’” Albany New York, 1967, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, NYWT&S Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-DIG-ppmsca-83073].

Additional Sources:

“How Clergy Set the Standard for Abortion Care,” by Bridgette Dunlap, The Atlantic, May 29, 2016.

“Clergymen Offer Abortion Advice,” by Edward B. Fiskethe, New York Times, May 22, 1967.

“The 1960s provide a path for securing legal abortion in 2022,” by Felicia Kornbluh, Washington Post, June 25, 2022.

“Harsh, then a haven: A look at New York abortion rights history,” b​By Tim Balk, New York Daily News, May 07, 2022.

“Remembering an Era Before Roe, When New York Had the ‘Most Liberal’ Abortion Law,” by Julia Jacobs, The New York Times, June 19, 2018.

“The First Time Women Shouted Their Abortions,” by Nona Willis Aronowitz, The New York Times, March 23, 2019. 

“Karen Stamm collection of Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA) records,” Sophia Smith Collection, SSC-MS-00811, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.

“Committee to End Sterilization Abuse (CESA) Statement of Purpose,” 1975.

“Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias: A Warrior in the Struggle for Reproductive Rights,” by Kathryn Krase, National Women’s Health Network, January 5, 1996.

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In 1966, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley declared that the first week of June would be known as “Puerto Rican Week,” culminating in the first Puerto Rican Parade, to honor the growing Puerto Rican population in the city. After the parade, while people were still celebrating, police shot a Puerto Rican man in the leg, following a pattern of police violence against the Puerto Rican community, which sparked a three-day uprising in the Humboldt Park neighborhood that changed Puerto Rican history in Chicago. Joining me to help us understand the Puerto Rican community in Chicago both before and after the Division Street uprising is Dr. Mirelsie Velázquez, an associate professor of education at the University of Oklahoma and author of Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-1977. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is “Quiero Vivir en Puerto Rico,” performed by Marta Romero and Anibal Herrero y Su Orquesta, and written by Guillermo Venegas (Hijo). The audio is in the public domain and is available via the Internet Archive. The episode image is “June 12 1966: Smoke rises from burning squad car as a crowd surrounds it during riots in Humboldt Park,” from the 1960s: Days of Rage website.

Additional Sources:

“It Was a Rebellion: Chicago’s Puerto Rican Community in 1966,” Chicago History Museum, via Google Arts & Culture.

“Chicago's 1966 Division Street Riot,” by Daniel Hautzinger, WTTW, September 2, 2020.

"Recollections: 1966 Division Street Riot," by Mervin Méndez, Diálogo: Vol. 2 (1997): No. 1 , Article 6.

“Puerto Ricans Riots: Chicago 1966,” Center for Puerto Rican Studies, CUNY Hunter.

“Spanish-American War,” History.com

“1917: Jones-Shafroth Act,” Library of Congress.

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Labor leader and immigrant rights activist Bert Corona viewed Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in the United States, both with and without documentation, as one people without borders, and he understood that their struggles were connected. While other Mexican American labor leaders were campaigning against undocumented workers, Corona fought to shift the opinions of Mexican Americans toward support for the undocumented and helped create a pro-immigrant consciousness among Latinos in the United States. Joining me to help us learn more about the life of Bert Corona is Dr. Eladio B. Bobadilla, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, whose 2019 dissertation looks at the roots of the Immigrants’ Rights Movement and who has written and taught about Bert Corona.  Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Bert Corona,” source unknown, believed to be available via Creative Commons.

Sources:

“‘One People without Borders’: The Lost Roots of the Immigrants’ Rights Movement, 1954-2006,” by Eladio B. Bobadilla, Duke University PhD Dissertation, 2019.

“From the Archives: Bert Corona; Labor Activist Backed Rights for Undocumented Workers,” by George Ramos, Los Angeles Times, January 17, 2001.

“The Legacy of Bert Corona," by Carlos Oretaga, The Progressive Magazine, August 1, 2001.

“Remembering Immigrant Defender Bert Corona,” by Eladio Bobadilla, The Progressive Magazine, February 7, 2022.

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The Mexican Revolution in the early 20th Century was a pivotal moment in Mexican history, and it was also a pivotal moment in United States history, as huge numbers of Mexicans fled war-torn Mexico and headed to the US border. Many Mexican Americans in the US today are the descendants of refugees fleeing the Revolution. To understand more about the experience of immigrants who came to the United States during the Mexican Revolution, I’m speaking in this episode with writer Alda P. Dobbs, author of middle grade novels Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna and The Other Side of the River. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “Bridge - El Paso to Juarez,” Bain News Service, ca. 1910, Photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, No known restrictions on publication. Additional Sources:

“The Mexican Revolution: November 20th, 1910,” EDSITEment, National Endowment for the Humanities, March 19, 2012.

“How the Mexican revolution of 1910 helped shape U.S. border policy,” audio interview of Kelly Lytle Hernández by Tonya Mosley, NPR Fresh Air, July 5, 2022

“Early Twentieth Century Mexican Immigration to the U.S.,” American Social History Productions, Inc

“The History of Mexican Immigration to the U.S. in the Early 20th Century,” interview of Julia Young by Jason Steinhauer, Library of Congress, March 11, 2015.

“The Demographic Impact of the Mexican Revolution in the United States,” B.J. Gratton, M.P. Gutmann, R. McCaa & R. Gutierrez-Montes, Texas Population Research Center Papers, 2000.

“Mexican Immigration to the United States,” byRamón A. Gutiérrez, Oxford Research Encyclopedias, July 29, 2019.

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Through the 19th Century, the US-Mexico border moved repeatedly, and the shifting borderlands were a space of cultural and economic transition that often gave rise to racialized gendered violence.   In this episode I speak with Dr. Bernadine Hernández, Associate Professor of American Literary Studies at the University of New Mexico, an activist with fronteristxs, and author of Border Bodies: Racialized Sexuality, Sexual Capital, and Violence in the Nineteenth-Century Borderlands. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “Mexican church at the smelter, El Paso, Texas, United States, ca. 1907,” Detroit Publishing Co. No known restrictions on publication, Accessed via the Library of Congress.

Additional Sources:

“A moving border, and the history of a difficult boundary,” by Ron Dungan, USA Today, The Wall, 2018. 

“The Violent History of the U.S.-Mexico Border,” by Becky Little, History.com, March 14, 2019.

“Mexico's Independence Day marks the beginning of a decade-long revolution,” by Heather Brady, National Geographic, September 14, 2018.

“The Republic of Texas - The Texas Revolution” The Treaties of Velasco,” Texas State Libraries and Archives Commission.

“Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848),” National Archives.

“Refusing to Forget: The History of Racial Violence on the Mexico-Texas Border.”

“Rodriguez, Josefa [Chipita] (unknown–1863),” by Marylyn Underwood, Texas State Historical Association.

“Woman by the River: Chipita’s ghost lingers on in San Patricio on 156th anniversary of hanging,” by Paul Gonzales, News of San Patricio, November 15, 2019.

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In mid-1930s, pregnant women in cities in California, Oregon, and Washington could obtain safe surgical abortions in clean facilities from professionals trained in the latest technique. The only catch? The abortions were illegal. The syndicate that provided these abortions was the Pacific Coast Abortion Ring, which  operated from 1934 to 1936 with clinic locations in Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and San Diego, Long Beach, Hollywood, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, California. It employed more than thirty people, which included not just doctors but also receptionists, nurses, and steerers who referred women to the Pacific Coast Abortion clinics from doctors’ offices and pharmacies.  Joining me to help tell the story of the Pacific Coast Abortion Ring is Dr. Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, Assistant Professor of History at LaSierra University and author of From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969, the source for much of this introduction. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “Jewel Inez Joseph, mother of Ruth Attaway who died after an abortion, in court, Los Angeles, 1935,” published in the Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1935, and is available via the UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Additional Sources:

“Abortion and the Law in California: Lessons for Today,” by Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, California History, February 1, 2022; 99 (1): 10–29. 

“How California created the nation’s easiest abortion access — and why it’s poised to go further” by Kristen Hwang, Cal Matters, April 21, 2022.

“San Diego’s History as a Haven for Desperate Women” by Randy Dotinga, Voice of San Diego, July 3, 2022.

“‘Criminal Operations’: The First Fifty Years of Abortion Trials in Portland, Oregon,” by Michael Helquist. Oregon Historical Quarterly, 2015; 116 (1), 6–39. 

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For birth control advocate Mary Ware Dennett, the personal was political. After a difficult labor and delivery with her third child, a physician told Mary Ware Dennett she should not have any more children, but he told her nothing about how to prevent pregnancy. Dennett’s husband began an affair with a client of his architectural firm, destroying their marriage, and Dennett devoted her work to ensuring that other couples could receive information about birth control. A 1930 federal court case against her, United States v. Dennett, opened the door to widespread distribution of birth control information in the US. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Assistant Professor of History at Kennesaw State University and faculty research fellow at the Georgia State University College of Law’s Center for Law, Health & Society. She is writing a book called Battle for Birth Control: Mary Dennett, Margaret Sanger, and the Rivalry That Shaped a Movement, that will be published by Rutgers University Press. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is a photo of Mary Ware Dennett from the New York Journal-American Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University Of Texas.

Sources:

“The Sex Side of Life: An Explanation for Young People,” by Mary Ware Dennett, 1919. Available via Project Gutenberg.

“Papers of Mary Ware Dennett,” Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute

“The Sex Education Pamphlet That Sparked a Landmark Censorship Case,” by Sharon Spaulding, Smithsonian Magazine, September 30, 2021.

“A Birth-Control Crusader,” by Marjorie Heins, The Atlantic, October 1996.

“Mary Coffin Ware Dennett,” by Lakshmeeramya Malladi,Embryo Project Encyclopedia, June 22, 2016.

“Unsentimental Education: Mary Ware Dennett’s quest to make contraception—and knowledge about sex—available to all,” by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, The American Scholar, March 4, 2021.

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In 1742, in Pomfret, Connecticut, 19-year-old Sarah Grosvenor discovered she was pregnant, the result of a liaison with 27-year-old Amasa Sessions. Instead of marrying Sarah, Amasa provided her with a physician-prescribed abortifacient, what the youth of Pomfret called “taking the trade." When that didn’t work to end the pregnancy, the physician attempted a manual abortion, which led to Sarah’s death. Three years later, the physician was tried for “highhanded Misdemeanour." The surviving trial documentation gives us an unusually detailed look into the reproductive lives of Connecticut youths in the mid-18th Century.  Joining me in this episode to help us learn more about the Sarah Grosvenor case and its historical context is Dr. Cornelia H. Dayton, Professor of History at the University of Connecticut and author of the 1991 article, “Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-Century New England Village,” in The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 1, 1991, pp. 19–49, and co-creator of the Taking the Trade website. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is original artwork created by Matthew Weflen.

Additional Sources:

“Abortion in Colonial America: A Time of Herbal Remedies and Accepted Actions,” by Kimberly Phillips, UConn Today, August 22, 2022.

“The Strange Death of Sarah Grosvenor in 1742,” New England Historical Society.

“The History of Abortifacients,” by Stassa Edwards, Jezebel, November 18, 2014.

“How U.S. abortion laws went from nonexistent to acrimonious,” by Erin Blakemore, National Geographic, May 17, 2022.

“In Connecticut, A Long Battle For Reproductive Freedom,” by Susan Campbell, Hartford Courant, June 5, 2014.

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Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time, whose books have been outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. You can probably name several of her books and recurring characters, but how much do you know about Agatha Christie herself? In our final British History episode, we look at Agatha Christie’s life, in the hospital dispensary, at home with her daughter, abroad on archeological digs, and behind the typewriter. Joining me in this episode to help us learn more about Agatha Christie is historian Dr. Lucy Worsley, OBE, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces and BBC presenter and author of the new book, Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman, which will be published in the United States on September 6, 2022. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is Agatha Christie as a young woman, circa 1910. It is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons. The audio interlude is “Mystery Waltz,” written by Raymond Scott and performed by Raymond Scott and His Orchestra in 1953. The audio is in the public domain and available via Archive.org.

Additional Sources:

AgathaChristie.com: The home of Agatha Christie

“A Very British Murder with Lucy Worsley,” BBC Select TV Mini Series, 2013.

“When the World’s Most Famous Mystery Writer Vanished,” by Tina Jordan, The New York Times, June 11, 2019.

“The Essential Agatha Christie,” by Tina Jordan, The New York Times, October 25, 2020. 

“Why Agatha Christie is even more awesome than you thought,” by Margaret Sessa-Hawkins, PBS NewsHouse, September 15, 2015.

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When the United Kingdom joined forces with Turkey and France to declare war on Russia in March 1854, Jamaican-Scottish nurse Mary Seacole decided her help was needed. When the British War Office declined her repeated offers of help, she headed off to Crimea anyway and set up her British Hotel near Balaklava. The British Hotel, which opened in March 1855, was a combination general store, restaurant, and first aid station, and the British soldiers and officers came to love Mary and call her “Mother Seacole.” Joining me in this episode to help us learn more about Mary Seacole is historian and writer Helen Rappaport, author of the new book, In Search of Mary Seacole: The Making of a Black Cultural Icon and Humanitarian, which will be released in the United States on September 6, 2022. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is a photograph of Mary Seacole from an unknown source, believed to be dated around 1850; it is in the public domain. 

Additional Sources:

“Mary Seacole & Black Victorian History: Remarkable Women in Extraordinary Circumstances,” Helen Rappaport.

Mary Seacole Trust.

“The Crimean War,” by Andrew Lambert, BBC.

“Crimean War,” History.com

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Henrietta Maria, the French Catholic wife of King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the 17th Century, was called a “Popish brat of France” by her British subjects, blamed for the English Civil War, and seen as a mannish and heartless mother. The reality is, of course, much more nuanced. Henrietta Maria fiercely loved Charles and their children and fought to protect them in any way she could during a time of upheaval and violence. In this episode we push past the caricature of Henrietta Maria to see the real, complicated, person she was. Joining me in this episode is historian and writer Leanda de Lisle, author of the new book, Henrietta Maria: The Warrior Queen Who Divided a Nation, which will be released in the United States on September 6, 2022. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Henrietta Maria,” painted by Anthony van Dyck, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

“Who was Henrietta Maria of France?” Royal Museums Greenwich

“Henrietta Maria, Queen Of Great Britain (1609-69),” Royal Collection Trust

“Queen Henrietta Maria,” Merton College Oxford

“English Civil Wars,” History.com 

“The English Civil Wars: History And Stories,” English Heritage

“British Civil Wars,” National Army Museum

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During the Golden Age of Pirates, two fierce and ruthless pirates stood apart from the rest, despite their brief careers. The only women in their crew, Anne Bonny and Mary Read were aggressive fighters to the end, refusing to surrender even when their captain called for quarter.   Joining me to discuss Anne Bonny and Mary Read is pirate expert Dr. Rebecca Simon, author of the new book, Pirate Queens: The Lives of Anne Bonny & Mary Read. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode audio is “Pirate Song,” written by Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry F. Gilbert; and performed by Reinald Werrenrath in July 1925; the audio is in the public domain. The episode image is an illustration of Anne Bonny and Mary Read from the 1724 book A General History of the Pyrates; the image is in the Public Domain and available through the Internet Archive. 

Additional Sources:

“If There’s a Man Among Ye: The Tale of Pirate Queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read,” by Karen Abbott, Smithsonian Magazine, August 9, 2011.

“How Anne Bonny and Mary Read Changed The Face Of Female Piracy,” by Katie Serena, All That’s Interesting, February 20, 2018; Updated May 24, 2021.

“How Two 18th-Century Lady Pirates Became BFFs on the High Seas,” by Hadley Meares, Atlas Obscura, September 9, 2015.

“The Female Pirates, Anne Bonny & Mary Read,” by Rebecca Simon, May 23, 2022.

“Female pirate lovers whose story was ignored by male historians immortalised with statue,” by Maya Oppenheim, The Independent, November 19, 2020.

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During World War II, the United States Army contracted with a group of engineers at the University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Electrical Engineering to build the ENIAC, the world’s first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer in order to more quickly calculate numbers for ballistics tables. Once the top-secret device was built, someone needed to figure out how to program the more than 17,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 6,000 switches, and 1,500 mechanical relays so that the calculations could be run. Six women mathematicians who had been manually calculating the figures, were chosen to develop the programming, which they worked out before they were even allowed to see the machine. Joining me to help us learn more about the ENIAC six is Kathy Kleiman, a leader in Internet law and policy, founder of the ENIAC Programmers Project, and author of the 2022 book, Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World's First Modern Computer. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Photograph of World's First Computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator,” National Archives at College Park, ARC Identifier 594262.

Sources:

Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer by Kathy Kleiman

The ENIAC Programmers Project

“Jean Bartik, Software Pioneer, Dies at 86,” by Steve Lohr, The New York Times, April 7, 2011.

“Frances E. Holberton, 84, Early Computer Programmer,” by Steve Lohr, The New York Times, December 17, 2001.

The Computers: The Remarkable Story of the ENIAC Programmers, 2016, Vimeo On-Demand.

“ENIAC Accumulator #2,” Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

“The world’s first general purpose computer turns 75,” by Erica K. Brockmeier, Penn Today, February 11, 2021.

“The Brief History of the ENIAC Computer,” by Steven Levy, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2013.

“ENIAC: First computer makes history,” by Michael Kanellos, ZDNet, February 13, 2006.

“ENIAC Programmers,” Women in Technology Hall of Fame Awards.

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A February 2021 report by National Nurses United found that while Filipinos make up 4% of RNs in the United States, they accounted for a stunning 26.4% of the registered nurses who had died of COVID-19 and related complications. Why are there so many Filipino nurses in the United States and especially so many of the frontlines of healthcare? To answer that question, we need to look at the history of American colonization of The Philippines, United States immigration policies, and the establishment of the Medicare and Medicaid programs in the US.  Joining me to help us learn more about Filipino nurses is Dr. Catherine Ceniza Choy, Professor of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies and Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of the 2003 book, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History, and the new book, Asian American Histories of the United States. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Baby show arranged by Red Cross nurse, Phillipines [sic] Chapter, P.I. Philippines, 1922,” Courtesy of the Library of Congress, No known restrictions on publication.

Additional Sources:

When the Reporter Asks You Why There Are So Many Filipino Nurses in the U.S.: You want more than the count of their lives lost,” by Catherine Ceniza Choy, The Margins, May 17, 2021.

“Why are there so many Filipino nurses in the U.S.?” by Anne Brice, Berkeley News, May 28, 2019.

“Why are there so many Filipino Nurses in California? After Filling a Nursing Shortage in the 1960s, Immigrant Caregivers Have Changed the Practice and the Politics of Health Care” by Catherine Ceniza Choy, Zocalo, September 20, 2019

“Sins of Omission How Government Failures to Track Covid-19 Data Have Led to More Than 3,200 Health Care Worker Deaths and Jeopardize Public Health,” National Nurses United, Updated March 2021.

“COVID-19 takes heavy toll on Filipino health care workers,” PBS News Weekend, May 9, 2020.

“The History of Medicare,” National Academy of Social Insurance. 

“History, Philippines,” by Gregorio C. Borlaza, Britannica. 

“Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965,” History, Art, & Archives, United States House of Representatives.

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When Alabama plantation owner Samuel Townsend died in 1856, he willed his vast fortune to his children and his nieces. What seems like an ordinary bequest was anything but, since Townsend’s children and nieces were his enslaved property. Townsend, who knew the will would be challenged in court, left nothing to chance, hiring the best lawyer he could find to ensure that his legatees received both their freedom and the resources they would need to survive in a country that was often hostile to free African Americans. To learn more about the Townsend Family, I’m joined in this episode by ​public historian Dr. R. Isabela Morales, the Editor and Project Manager of The Princeton & Slavery Project, and author of Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Fugitive African Americans fording the Rappahannock,” photographed by Timothy H. O’Sullivan in August 1862. The image is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division Additional Sources:

“An enslaved Alabama family and the question of generational wealth in the US,” by Isabela Morales, OUP Blog, June 15, 2022.

“Estate of Samuel Townsend,” The University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections, Septimus D. Cabiness papers.

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When Benjamin Franklin died in April 1790, his last will contained an unusual codicil, leaving 1000 pounds sterling each to Philadelphia and Boston, to be used in a very specific way that he hoped would both help tradesmen in the two cities and eventually leave the cities, and their respective states, with fortunes to spend on public works 200 years later. At a moment when it wasn’t clear whether the United States would survive at all, Franklin made a gamble on the American spirit. To learn more about the fascinating tale of Ben Franklin’s will, I’m joined by Michael Meyer, Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, and author of Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet: The Favorite Founder's Divisive Death, Enduring Afterlife, and Blueprint for American Prosperity. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is a painting of Benjamin Franklin, by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis. It is available in the Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

Library of Congress Benjamin Franklin Papers

Franklin Timeline, The Benjamin Franklin House

Last WIll & Testament of Benjamin Franklin, Living Trust Network

“​​From Ben Franklin, a Gift That's Worth Two Fights,” by Fox Butterfield, The New York Times, April 21, 1990

“How a 200-Year-Old Gift From Benjamin Franklin Made Boston and Philadelphia a Fortune,” by Jake Rossen, Mental Floss, August 20, 2020

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Dale Evans is probably best known as the Queen of the West, the wife and co-star of the King of Cowboys, Roy Rogers. But before she ever met Roy, Dale had a successful career in singing, songwriting, and acting, and she had plans to be an even bigger star in musicals, which to Dale, meant not Westerns.  This week we do a deep dive into the life of Dale Evans and how she became a cowgirl, with historian Dr. Theresa Kaminski, author of the new book, Queen of the West: The Life and Times of Dale Evans. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is a photograph of Dale Evans taken by Harry Warnecke in 1947. It is in the public domain and available via the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. The musical interludes are “Don’t Ever Fall in Love with a Cowboy,” written and performed by Dale Evans in 1949; and “Cowgirl Polka,” written and performed by Dale Evans in 1950. The audio for both is in the public domain and available via the Internet Archive. 

Additional Sources:

“Dale Evans (1912–2001),” by Nancy Hendricks, Encyclopedia of Arkansas, February 6, 2018.

“Dale Evans, the Queen of the West, Is Dead at 88,” by James Barron, The New York TImes, February 8, 2001

“Roy Rogers + Dale Evans: A Love Story Made in the West,” by Courtney Fox, Wide Open Country, May 30, 2022

“Dale Evans,” RoyRogers.com

“The story of Roy Rogers, the man behind the ‘King of the Cowboys,’” by Jeff Suess, Cincinnati Enquirer, June 19, 2022

“The Legacy Lives On: Meet Roy Rogers’ Children,” by Kim C, Country Rebel, November 2, 2020

Videos:

Dale Evans Sings "I Love the West" (From "Bells of San Angelo", 1947)

“Dale Evans: Beyond The Happy Trails: Dusty Rogers Interview”

Roy Rogers & Dale Evans "They Call The Wind Maria & Wand'rin' Star" on The Ed Sullivan Show, 1970

Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Biography - Happy Trails Theatre Feature 

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On July 4, Americans will eat 150 million hot dogs, spend $1 billion on beer, and watch 16,000 fireworks displays (and those are just the official ones). But why do we celebrate on July 4, when did it become a national holiday, and did John Adams eat hot dogs? Joining me for the story of the Declaration of Independence, why July 4th might not be the right date to be celebrating, and who the signers actually were, is historian, podcaster, and DC tour guide, Rebecca Fachner. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The musical interlude is “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” written by John Philip Sousa and performed by the United States Navy Band in 1929. The recording is in the public domain and is housed in the Internet Archive. The image is a photograph of “The Declaration of Independence: One of two ‘exact’ facsimiles given to James Madison on June 30, 1824, sent by John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State, according to Congressional Resolution. Copperplate engraving printed on vellum, William J. Stone, 1823.” Declaration is in the collection of David M. Rubenstein and is displayed in Chicago, Illinois. The photograph of the Declaration was taken by Kelly Therese Pollock on July 1, 2022. 

Sources:

“Declaration of Independence: A Transcription,” National Archives.

“Opinion: Independence Day on July 2? John Adams got it right,” by David Cutler, PBS NewsHour, July 3, 2018.

“Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776,” Massachusetts Historical Society.

“Fourth of July – Independence Day,” History.com, December 16, 2009; Updated June 21, 2022.

“Where Did the Term ‘Gerrymander’ Come From?” by Erick Trickey, Smithsonian Magazine, July 20, 2017.

“Forgotten Founders: Elbridge Gerry, The ‘Brusque Maverick,’” by Nicholas Mosvick, Constitution Daily, August 3, 2020.

“10 Things You Didn't Know About the Fourth of July,” by Jason Serafino, Mental Floss, July 4, 2018; Updated June 28, 2022.

“What's the History of July 4th? Plus, 22 Surprising 4th of July Facts,” by Linsay Lowe, Parade Magazine, July 2, 2022.

“25 Fun 4th of July Trivia Facts to Spark Your Red, White, and Blue Spirit,” by Josiah Soto, The Pioneer Woman, June 17, 2022.

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On a hot weekend night in August 1966 trans women fought back against police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. Although the Compton’s riot didn’t spark a national movement the way Stonewall would three years later, it did have an effect, leading to the creation of support services for transgender people in San Francisco, and a reduction in police brutality against the trans community. Joining me to discuss the riot, its causes, and its aftermath, is historian Dr. Susan Stryker, co-writer and co-director of the Emmy-winning 2005 documentary, Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, and author of several books, including Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image origin is unknown; it is used as the cover image of the documentary, and appears in many related news stories without attribution.

Additional sources:

“At the Crossroads of Turk and Taylor: Resisting carceral power in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District,” by Susan Stryker, Places Journal, October 2021.

“Compton's Cafeteria riot: a historic act of trans resistance, three years before Stonewall,” by Sam Levin, The Guardian, June 21, 2019.

“Ladies In The Streets: Before Stonewall, Transgender Uprising Changed Lives,” by Nicole Pasulka, NPR Code Switch, May 5, 2015.

“Don't Let History Forget About Compton's Cafeteria Riot,” by Neal Broverman, Advocate, August 2, 2018.

“Compton's Cafeteria Riot,” by Andrea Borchert, Los Angeles Public Library, April 16, 2021.

“How lost photos of a defining landmark in LGBTQ history were rediscovered on Facebook,” by Ryan Kost, San Francisco Chronicle, May 25, 2021.

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In the summer of 1990, at the third annual Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the term Two Spirit was established. An English translation of the Northern Algonquin term niizh manitoag, Two Spirit describes masculine and feminine qualities within a single person. As a pan tribal term, Two Spirit both connected organizers across different Native nations and also helped them re-discover the traditional terminology used in their own cultural history. Joining me to help us understand more about the Two-Spirit people is Dr. Gregory Smithers, a American history at Virginia Commonwealth University, and author of the new book, Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “We-Wa, a Zuni berdache, full length portrait,” photographed between circa 1871 and circa 1907 by John K. Hillers, National Archives at College Park, Public domain.

Additional sources:

“What does 'Two-Spirit' mean? What to know about Two-Spirit, indigenous LGBTQ identities,” by David Oliver, USA Today, December 10, 2021.

“8 Things You Should Know About Two Spirit People,” by Tony Enos, Indian Country Today, September 13, 2018.

“Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ Identities: Today and Centuries Ago,” Human Rights Campaign, November 23, 2020.

“The 'two-spirit' people of indigenous North Americans,” by Walter L. Williams, The Guardian, October 11, 2010.

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The 12-story Women’s House of Detention, situated in the heart of Greenwich Village in New York City, from 1932 to 1974, was central to the queer history of The Village. The House of D, as it was known, housed such inmates as Angela Davis, Afeni Shakur, Andrea Dworkin, and Valerie Solanas, and was formative in their thinking and writing. On the night of the Stonewall Riots, the incarcerated women and transmaculaine people in the House of D, a few hundred feet away from The Stonewall Inn, joined in, chanting “Gay power!” and lighting their possessions on fire and throwing them out the windows onto the street in solidarity. Joining me to help us understand more about the Women’s House of Detention and its role in queer history is historian and writer Hugh Ryan, author of the 2022 book, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Women’s House of Detention, Jefferson Market Courthouse, View Northwest from West 8th Street, at Sixth and Greenwich Avenues, 1943,” Municipal Archives, Department of Public Works Collection.

Additional Sources:

“Prison Memoirs: The New York Women’s House of Detention,” by Angela Davis,The Village Voice, Originally published October 10, 1974.

“The Women’s House of Detention,” by Sarah Bean Apmann, Village Preservation, January 29, 2018.

“Women’s House of Detention,” 1931-1974, by Joan Nestle, Out History, Historical Musings 2008.

“'The Women's House of Detention' Illuminates a Horrific Prison That 'Helped Define Queerness for America',” by Gabrielle Bruney, Jezebel, May 9, 2022.

“Site of the Women's House of Detention (1932-1974),” by Rebecca Woodham and Clio Admin,” Clio: Your Guide to History. February 26, 2021.

“The Queer History of the Women’s House of Detention,” by Hugh Ryan, The Activist History Review, May 31, 2019.

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Queer suffragists were central to the women’s suffrage movement in the United States from its earliest days. However, in a movement that placed great importance on public image in service of the goal of achieving the vote, queer suffragists who pushed the boundaries of “respectability” were sometimes ostracized, and others hid their queerness, or had it erased by others. Joining me to help us learn about queer suffragists is historian Dr. Wendy Rouse, Associate Professor in History at San Jose State University. Dr. Rouse is the author of a new book from New York University Press, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement.  Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947) and Mary Garrett Hay (1857–1928) casting ballots, presumably during the midterm elections, November 5, 1918.” Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (128.00.00)

Additional Sources:

“When lesbians led the women’s suffrage movement,” by Anya Jabour, The Conversation, January 24, 2020.

“How Queer Women Powered the Suffrage Movement,” by Maya Salam, The New York Times, August 14, 2020.

“Carrie & Mollie & Anna & Lucy: Queering the Women’s Suffrage Movement,” by Susan War, American Experience, PBS, October 23, 2020.

“The Very Queer History of the Suffrage Movement,” by Wendy Rouse, National Park Service.

“The Queer Suffragists Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote: New research shows that women’s right to vote, now a century old, was won by a distinctly LGBTQ+ group of activists,” by Sarah D. Collins, Them, August 14, 2020.

“When American Suffragists Tried to ‘Wear the Pants,” by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, The Atlantic, June 12, 2019.

“The Unconventional Life of Mary Walker, the Only Woman to Have Received the U.S. Medal of Honor: Dress reformer, women’s rights activist, and all-around pioneer,” by Anika Burgess, Atlas Obscura, September 27, 2017.

“Annie Rensselaer Tinker (1884-1924) Of East Setauket And NYC: Philanthropist, Suffragist, WWI Volunteer In Europe,” by Catherine Tinker, Long Island History Journal, 2017.

Related Episodes:

Sophonisba Breckinridge

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee

Zitkála-Šá

The Suffrage Road Trip of 1915

Fashion, Feminism, and the New Woman of the late 19th Century

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During Reconstruction, cotton planters in the Mississippi Delta recruited Chinese laborers to work on their plantations, to replace the emancipated slaves who had previously done the hard labor. However, the Chinese workers quickly learned that they couldn’t earn enough money picking cotton to send back to their families, and they turned instead to running small grocery stores, filling a niche in the market of the Deep South. At one point, the city of Greenville, Mississippi, had 40,000 residents and 50 Chinese-owned grocery stores. Although the numbers of Chinese Americans living in the Mississippi Delta region had dwindled now, their legacy remains. Joining me to help us learn about this history is filmmaker and musician Larissa Lam, director of the 2021 documentary Far East Deep South, which follows her husband’s family as they search for their own lost family history in the Mississippi Delta.  Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “In the Mississippi Delta. There is an ever-increasing number of Chinese grocerymen and merchants.” Marion Post Wolcott, photographer.  Leland, Mississippi, 1939. The photograph is courtesy of the Library of Congress and is in the Public Domain. Audio Credit: “The First Day,” by Larissa Lam, from the 2015 album Love & Discovery, Label: LOG Records/Del Oro Music. Song clip used with permission of the artist.

Additional Sources:

“The Legacy Of The Mississippi Delta Chinese,” Melissa Block and Elissa Nadworny, NPR, March 18, 2017.

“Chinese in Mississippi: An Ethnic People in a Biracial Society,” Charles Reagan Wilson, Mississippi History Now, November 2022.

“Neither Black Nor White in the Mississippi Delta: Two photographers document a community of Chinese-Americans in the birthplace of the blues,” James Estrin, The New York Times, March 13, 2018.

“The Grocery Story of the Mississippi Delta Chinese,” Victoria Bouloubasis, Somewhere South, April 13, 2020.

Mississippi Delta Chinese: Life in Chinese Grocery Stores.

“Op-Ed: How African Americans and Chinese immigrants forged a community in the Delta generations ago,” by Larissa Lam, Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2021.

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In Patsy Mink’s first term in Congress in 1965, she was one of only 11 women serving in the US House of Representatives, and she was the first woman of color to ever serve in Congress. Mink was no stranger to firsts, being the first Japanese-American woman licensed to practice law in Hawaii, after being one of only two women in her graduating class at the University of Chicago Law School. She would later be the first Asian American to run for President.  Mink leaned on her own experiences of sexism and racism in writing and supporting legislation to help women, especially women of color and women in poverty. MInk co-authored and supported the landmark Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act,  that stated that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” After Mink’s death in 2002, Title IX was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. Joining me to help us learn about Patsy Mink are Dr. Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and Patsy Mink’s daughter, Dr. Gwendolyn (Wendy) Mink, former Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and former Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Smith College. Drs. Wu and Mink have co-authored a new book, Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress.  Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “1972 campaign poster image from the Patsy Mink for President Committee,” Congressional Portrait File, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-122137) - Patsy T. Mink Papers at the Library of Congress. Image is in the Public Domain. Audio Credit: “The National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year 1975 sponsored this conversation with Rep. Martha Griffith (D-Michigan), Rep. Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii) and Wendy Ross of the U.S. Information Service.” November 26, 1974. Video/Audio is in the Public Domain.

Additional Sources:

“MINK, Patsy Takemoto,” United States House of Representatives Archives.

“Patsy T. Mink Papers” at the Library of Congress

“Women who made legal history: Patsy Mink,” University of Chicago Law School, March 31, 2021.

“Rewriting the Rules: Celebrating 50 Years of Title IX,” The William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii at Manoa.  

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In the decades before World War II, 50,000 of the US-born children of Japanese immigrants (a quarter of their total population) migrated from the United States to the Japanese Empire. Although these second generation Japanese Americans (called Nisei) were US citizens, they faced prejudice and discrimination in the US and went to Japan in search of a better life.  Joining me to help us learn about the Nisei who returned to Japan, what motivated them, and the challenges they faced both in Japan and back in the US is Dr. Michael Jin, Assistant Professor of Global Asian Studies and History at the University of Illinois Chicago and author of Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: A Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Two students pose outisde a building. Phillip Okano attended school in Japan from 1923-1933,” Courtesy of Okano Family Collection, Densho, This work is licensed under a Creative Common Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Audio Credit: “Tanko Bushi (Coal Miners Dance),” performed by Masao Suzuki, 1956. Courtesy of the Internet Archive. Audio is in the Public Domain.

Additional Sources:

“Stranded: Nisei in Japan Before, During, and After World War II,” by Brian Niiya, Densho, July 28, 2016.

“Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History: Japanese,” Library of Congress.

“Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and World War II,” Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

“First Japanese immigrant arrives in the U.S.” History.com, March 26, 2021.

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There are around 300,000 Thai Americans but almost 5,000 Thai restaurants in the United States. To understand how Thai restaurants became so ubiquitous in the US, we dive into the history of how Thai cuisine arrived in the US before Thai immigrants started to arrive in large numbers, and how Thai Americans capitalized on the popularity of their food to find their niche in the US economy. I’m joined in this episode by Associate Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Dr. Mark Padoongpatt, author of Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Thai chef Salapirom Phanita, from Pattaya Marriot hotel catering, prepares food in the forward-deployed amphibious dock landing ship USS Tortuga's (LSD 46) galley during a cooking exchange with U.S. Navy chefs as a part of exercise Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) Thailand 2013. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Amanda S. Kitchner/Released).” Please consider a donation to the Thai Community Development Center.

Additional Sources:

“How Thai food took over America,” by Francis Lam, The Splendid Table, January 10, 2019.

“The Surprising Reason that There Are So Many Thai Restaurants in America,” by Myles Karp, Vice, March 29, 2018.

“Jet Tila on the Evolution of Thai Food in America,” by Gowri Chandra, Food and Wine, April 27, 2018.

“Thai Food, Constructed and Deconstructed,” by Raegen Pietrucha, UNLV News Center, September 19, 2019.

“The Decades-Long Evolution of Thai Cuisine in Los Angeles,” by Jean Trinhm KCET, December 12, 2018.

“Thai Cusine’s Right Time and Place,” by Mimi Sheraton, New York Times, May 20, 1981.

“Pad Thai Diplomacy,” by Savannah Wallace, Medium, August 9, 2020.

“You Call This Thai Food? The Robotic Taster Will Be the Judge,” by Thomas Fuller, New York Times, September 28, 2014.

“The Oddly Autocratic Roots of Pad Thai,” by Alex Mayyasi, Atlas Obscura, November 7, 2019.

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Mary Paik Lee (Paik Kuang Sun) was born in the Korean Empire on August 17, 1900, and was baptized by American Presbyterian minister Dr. Samuel Austin Moffett, one of the first American Presbyterian missionaries to come to Korea. In 1905, her family left Korea for Hawaii, fleeing the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula. Late in her life, Mary wrote a memoir, recounting her family’s struggles in Hawaii and then California, where they faced discrimination and poverty, all while striving to make a better life and holding firm to their Presbyterian faith. I’m joined in this episode by historian Dr. Jane Hong, author of Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion, who helps contextualize Mary’s story in the larger story of Asian immigration to the United States in the 20th Century. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Mr. and Mrs. H. M. Lee with their first son, Henry, in Anaheim, 1926,” from family photo albums. 

Sources:

Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America, by Mary Paik Lee and Sucheng Chan, with a Forward by David K. Yoo, University of Washington Press, 2019.

“History of Korean Immigration to America, from 1903 to Present,” Boston University School of Theology: Boston Korean Diaspora Project.

“Russo-Japanese War,” History.com, March 23, 2018 (Updated April 9, 2021).

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Paris has a long history as the fashion capital of the world. In the late 19th Century, American women, like European women, wanted the latest in French fashion. The wealthiest women traveled to Paris regularly to visit their favorite couturiers, like the House of Worth and Maison Félix, to update their wardrobes. For those women who couldn’t afford to travel, Paris came to them, via international expositions, magazines, and department stores.  I’m joined in this episode by art historian Dr. Elizabeth L. Block, author of Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion, who helps us understand how the American women who were purchasing gowns and dresses helped transform the fashion industry. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Mrs. William Astor (Caroline Webster Schermerhorn, 1831–1908),” painted by Carolus-Duran, 1890. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image is in the Public Domain. Audio Credit: “Nuit d'Etoiles (Starry Night),” written by Théodore de Banville and Claude Debussy; performed by Julia Culp and Coenraad V. Bos, 1917. Courtesy of the Internet Archive. Audio is in the Public Domain.

Additional Sources:

“Charles Frederick Worth (1825–1895) and the House of Worth,” Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“‘The Gilded Age’ Costumes are Like a Late-19th Century High-Fashion Street Style Editorial,” by Fawnia Soo Hoo, Fashionista, February 7, 2022.

“How America’s Gilded Age Paved The Way For Fashion Today,” by Eilidh Hargreaves, Vogue, January 30, 2022.

“Downtown, Uptown: From The Dry Goods Store To The Palace Of Consumption,” by Keren Ben-Horin, Fashion History Timeline, Fashion Institute of New York, Mary 16, 2018.

“The history of haute couture,” Harper’s Bazaar, January 19, 2017.

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Today, when Americans think of it at all, they take for granted the institution of The Cabinet, the heads of the executive departments and other advisors who meet with the President around a big mahogany table in the White House. But how did The Cabinet come into being? It’s not established in the Constitution, and the writers of The Constitution were explicitly opposed to creating a private executive advisory body. I’m joined in this episode by presidential historian Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, who helps us answer the question of how – and why – President George Washington formed the first Cabinet, and why it continued. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Washington and his cabinet [lithograph],” New York : Published by Currier & Ives, c1876. Via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Image is in the Public domain.

Additional Sources:

“The President’s Cabinet Was an Invention of America’s First President,” by Karin Wulf, Smithsonian Magazine, April 7, 2020.

“Cabinet Members,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

“The Cabinet,” The White House.

“First Cabinet Confirmation,” United States Senate. 

“The changing faces of Cabinet diversity, George Washington through Joe Biden,” by Lindsay Chervinsky and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, FixGov, The Brookings Institution, April 13, 2021.

“The Cabinet of President Washington,” by By James Parton, The Atlantic, January 1873.

“The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription,” America’s Founding Documents, National Archives.

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From the founding of the United States, there were people who opposed slavery, but many who grappled with the concept, including slave owner Thomas Jefferson, envisioned a plan of gradual emancipation for the country. In 1817, after the establishment of the American Colonization Society, free Blacks in Philadelphia and elsewhere began to fight for immediate abolition for all enslaved people in the United States. By the 1830s, they were joined in these efforts by white allies. Although not as well known as later abolitionists like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionists of the 1830s played a crucial role in building and popularizing the movement. These abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison, David Ruggles, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, the Forten Family, and the Grimké sisters, faced personal violence, destruction of property, financial ruin, and physical maladies as they raised their voices and put their bodies on the line for the cause. I’m joined in this episode by J.D. Dickey, author of The Republic of Violence: The Tormented Rise of Abolition in Andrew Jackson's America. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Anti-Slavery Meeting on the [Boston] Common” From Gleason's Pictorial, May 3, 1851. Photomural from woodcut. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Additional Sources:

“Jan. 15, 1817: The Vote on Colonization of Free Blacks in West Africa,” The Zinn Education Project.

“Africans in America,” PBS.

“Grimke Sisters,” National Park Service.

“The Abolitionists,” American Experience, PBS, Aired January 8, 2013.

David Ruggles Center for History and Education.

“Friends of Freedom: The Pennsylvania Female Anti-Slavery Society,” Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 

Related Episodes:

The Nativist Riots of Philadelphia in 1844

Prohibition in the 1850s

Freedom Suits in Maryland & DC, 1790-1864

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In June 1913, a group of four men ascended to the peak of Denali, the first humans known to have reached the highest point in North America. In a time before ultra lightweight and high-tech equipment, Hudson Stuck, Harry Karstens, Robert Tatum, and Walter Harper had to haul heavy loads of food and supplies and books up the mountain with them, battling fire and clearing away earthquake debris along the way. After nearly two months of expedition, they finally stood atop the world. I’m joined in this episode by Patrick Dean, author of A Window to Heaven: The Daring First Ascent of Denali: America's Wildest Peak. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Photo Credit: “Hudson Stuck and Harry Karstens, 1913.” Photo is in the public domain. Book excerpt: “The Ascent of Denali (Mount Mckinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest Peak in North America,” by Hudson Stuck. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1918. The book is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

“The First Ascent of Denali: Digital Exhibits,” National Park Service.

“Expedition Denali: Making History, Building a Legacy,” by Aparna Rajagopal-Durbin, National Geographic, March 26, 2012.

“What It's Like to Climb Denali, North America's Highest Peak,” by James Barkman, Field Mag, June 11, 2018.

“Mt. McKinley Owes Its Name to an Epic Act of Trolling,” by Yoni Appelbaum, The Atlantic, August 31, 2015.

“The Long History Behind Renaming Mt. McKinley,” by Ben Railton, Talking Points Memo, September 1, 2015.

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When German troops invaded Austria in 1938, Cordelia Dodson was visiting Vienna, living with her siblings as they studied German, attended the opera, and marched with Austrian students protesting against Hitler. Even with this experience, Cordelia may have settled into academic life in the United States, but when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and the US entered the war, she felt called to serve her country. In a decades-long career in Europe, Cordelia Dodson Hood combined her linguistic skill, her phenomenal memory, and her ability to connect with people, to gather and analyze intelligence, first about the Germans, and then about the Soviets. Despite the importance of her intelligence work, her story has been largely hidden, overshadowed by the splashier spies of the time. I’m joined in this episode by Kathleen C. Stone, author of They Called Us Girls: Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage to Mad Men. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Photo Credit: “Cordelia Hood, undated.” Photograph by Nam de Beaufort, courtesy of Sarah Fisher. Audio credit: “Wiener Blut (Vienna Blood),” written by Johann Srauss, and performed by Erna Sack in July 1949, Public Domain.

Additional Sources:

“Intelligence officer did fieldwork for OSS and CIA: Cordelia Dodson Hood ’36, MA ’41.” Reed Magazine, December 2011.

“Cordelia Dodson Hood,” The Lincoln County News, July 31, 2011.

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In 1967, a Cleveland talent agent named Sid Friedman decided to capitalize on the popularity of football in the rust belt by launching a women’s football league, which he envisioned as entertainment, complete with mini-skirts and tear-away jerseys. The women he recruited had other ideas, and soon they were playing competitive tackle football, not in skirts but in football uniforms.  In 1974, the owners of several teams around the country, some from Friedman’s WPFL and some independent of it, formed to create their own league: the National Women’s Football League, the NWFL, which started with 7 teams and grew within a few years to 14 teams across three divisions. The league faced financial difficulties from the beginning and finally folded in 1989, but the desire of women to play professional football lives on. I’m joined in this episode by Britni de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D'Arcangelo, authors of Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Photo Credit: Brenda Cook, Brant Hopkins, and Baby Murf, Houston Herricanes. January 1979, Safety Valve, Published Monthly by Houston Natural Gas Corp., original photo provided by Brenda Cook, Houston Herricanes.

Additional Sources:

“Revolution on the American Gridiron: Gender, Contested Space, and Women’s Football in the 1970s,” by Andrew D. Linden, The International Journal of the History of Sport (2015), 32:18, 2171-2189.

“The Unusual Origins of the Dallas Bluebonnets, the Trailblazing Women’s Football Team: An excerpt from the new book Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League,” D Magazine, November 2, 2021.

“Remembering Toledo’s Troopers: Film to tell story of ’70s female football team,” by Tom Henry, The Blade, June 16, 2013.

“Almost Undefeated: The Forgotten Football Upset of 1976: How the Toledo Troopers, the most dominant female football team of all time, met their match,” by Britni de la Cretaz, Longreads, February 19, 2019.

“How sexism and homophobia sidelined the National Women's Football League,” by Victoria Whitley-Berry, NPR Morning Edition, November 3, 2021.

“The Forgotten History of Women’s Football,” by Erica Westly, Smithsonian Magazine, February 5, 2016.

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Born in 1911, Mildred Ella Didrikson Zaharias, who went by the nickname “Babe,” was a phenomenal, and confident athlete. Babe won Olympic gold in track and field, was an All American player in basketball, pitched in exhibition games in Major League Baseball, and won 17 straight women’s amateur golf tournaments, before turning pro and co-founding the LPGA.In a society that didn’t welcome women like Babe, she nonetheless forged her own path and won the hearts of fans along the way. I’m joined in this episode by History Professor Dr. Corye Perez Beene, author of the biweekly newsletter Awesome American Sports, who makes the case that Babe was the greatest American athlete who has ever lived. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: "Babe Didrikson,” National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Object number NPG.97.211. The image is in the public domain. Sources:

Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, by Susan E. Cayleff, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

This life I've led: my autobiography, by Babe Didrikson Zaharias. New York: Barnes, 1955.

Babe Conquers the World: The Legendary Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, by Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace, New York: Calkins Creek, 2014.

“Remembering A 'Babe' Sports Fans Shouldn't Forget,” All Things Considered, NPR, June 26, 2011.

“The 'greatest all-sport athlete' who helped revolutionize women's golf,” by Ben Morse, CNN, September 8, 2020.

“Babe Zaharias Dies; Athlete Had Cancer,” The New York Times, September 28, 1956

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One hundred fifty years ago, President Ulysses S. Grant signed an act establishing Yellowstone National Park into law, making it the first national park in the United States, and a cause for celebration in a country still recovering from the devastating Civil War. Not everyone celebrated, though, including Native Americans who had called the land home for thousands of years before white trappers and explorers first experienced the wild majesty of the landscape.  To learn more about the men who championed the creation of the park and the Indigenous resistance to it, I’m joined by historian Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, author of the new book, Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The between-segment song is “The Fellow in Yellowstone Park,” written by Gilbert Fogarty and performed by Kitty Kallen, assisted by Four Chicks and Chuck, in 1949. The song is available in the public domain through the Internet Archive.  The episode image is: “Excelsior Geyser, Yellowstone Park,” Painted by Thomas Moran in 1873. The painting is in the collect of Smithsonian American Art Museum, a gift of Mrs. Armistead Peter III, and is in the public domain.

Additional Sources:

“How Sitting Bull’s Fight for Indigenous Land Rights Shaped the Creation of Yellowstone National Park,” by Megan Kate Nelson, Smithsonian Magazine, March 1, 2022.

“The Big Business Politics Behind the Formation of Yellowstone National Park,” by Megan Kate Nelson, Time Magazine, March 1, 2022.

“History and Culture,” Yellowstone National Park, National Park Service.

“Yellowstone turns 150. Here's a peek into the national park's history,” by Jaclyn Diaz, NPR, March 1, 2022.

“Yellowstone National Park celebrates 150 wild years -- and what a history it's been,” by Forrest Brown, CNN, February 28, 2022.

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When the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee (or Creek), and Seminole Nations – known as “The Five Civilized Tribes” by white settlers – were forcibly moved from their lands in the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), they brought their possessions with them, including the people of African descent whom they had enslaved. After the Civil War, these slaves were freed and freedpeople were included in the allocation of Native lands undertaken by the Dawes Commission, making them the one group of former slaves to receive some reparations. However, like freedpeople in the South, their status and rights were often precarious and changed over time, especially with the establishment of Oklahoma statehood in 1907. To learn more, I’m joined by Dr. Alaina E. Roberts, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, and author of I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, Date Unknown; Oklahoma Historical Society.”

Additional Sources:

“Freedmen History,” Oklahoma Historical Society.

We're not going anywhere': Choctaw Freedmen cite history, ties to Tribal Nation in fight for citizenship, by Allison Herrera, KOSU, September 22, 2021.

“Black Freedmen struggle for recognition as tribal citizens,” by Sean Murphy, AP News, May 1, 2021.

“7 questions about Freedmen answered,” by Brian Oaster, High Country News, October 11, 2021.

“Tribes to Confront Bias Against Descendants of Enslaved People,” by Chris Cameron and Mark Walker, The New York Times, May 28, 2021.

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NOTE: Alice Dunbar-Nelson's story includes acts of sexual violence. Listeners may wish to skip past the introduction to avoid this content. Poet, essayist, and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson is perhaps best known as the widow of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, but she is a remarkable figure in her own right.  Born in New Orleans in 1875 to a mother who had only recently been freed from slavery and an unknown father, Alice graduated from Straight University (later Dillard University), became a teacher, and quickly started her own writing career. Throughout her life, Alice continued to teach and to write and to speak out on issues of women’s suffrage and civil rights for African Americans. To learn more about Alice Dunbar-Nelson, I’m joined by Dr. Tara T. Green, Professor of African American and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and author of the 2022 book, Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.” 

Additional Sources:

“Feminize Your Canon: Alice Dunbar-Nelson,” by Joanna Scutts, The Paris Review, September 28, 2020.

“An Unsung Legacy: The work and activism of Alice Dunbar-Nelson,” by Grace Miller, Unbound Blog, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, March 12, 2020.

“I am an American! The Authorship and Activism of Alice Dunbar-Nelson [Virtual Exhibit],” The Rosenbach, Free Library of Philadelphia.

“Alice Dunbar-Nelson Reads [Virtual Exhibit],” The University of Delaware.

Writings of Alice Dunbar-Nelson

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On February 14, 1945, after crossing the Atlantic Ocean and surviving a run-in with a Nazi U-Boat, the women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion disembarked the Île-de-France in Glasgow, Scotland.  The task awaiting the only all-Black, all-female battalion overseas during World War II was daunting. There were airplane hangars filled with a backlog of millions of pieces of mail sitting in Birmingham, England, addressed from friends and family to service members stationed across Europe.  Despite segregation and poor working and living conditions, the Six Triple Eight made quick work of the postal backlog, doing their part to lift morale among the American military personnel stationed in Europe. To learn more about the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, I’m joined now by writer Kaia Alderson, author of Sisters in Arms: A Novel of the Daring Black Women Who Served During World War II. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Inspection of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion,” Courtesy of the U.S. Army.

Additional Sources:

“6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion (Women's Army Corps),” Prepared by Kathleen Fargey, AAMH-FPO, U.S. Army, February 14, 2014.

“The Women’s Army Corps: A Commemoration of World War II Service,” by Judith A. Bellafaire, U.S. Army Center for Military History Publication 72-15.

“The 6888 Postal Directory Battalion- Heroes of World War II [video],” Marking History Channel, July 21, 2021.

“The Black Female Battalion That Stood Up to a White Male Army,” by Christina Brown Fisher, The New York Times, June 17, 2020.

“The SixTripleEight: No Mail, Low Morale,” National World War II Museum, February 10, 2021.

“Seventy-Five Years Ago, the Military’s Only All-Black Female Band Battled the War Department and Won,” by Carrie Hagen, Smithsonian Magazine, March 28, 2019.

Related Episodes of Unsung History:

“The Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II,” with Dr Katherine Sharp Landdeck

“Alaska Territorial Guard in World War II,” with Dr. Holly Guise

“Women in the U.S. Military during the Cold War,” with Dr. Tanya Roth

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Julia Chinn was born into slavery in Kentucky at the tail end of the 18th Century. Despite laws against interracial marriage, Richard Mentor Johnson, the ninth Vice President of the United States, called Julia Chinn his wife, and he recognized their daughters together as his. Johnson left Julia in charge of his Blue Spring Farm when he was away in DC for months at a time, and Julia ran the household and plantation, managed the business affairs, and worked as both manager and nurse at the Chocktaw Academy boarding school for Native American boys on the property. When the Marquis de Lafayette visited Blue Spring, Julia Chinn organized a magnificent celebration in his honor, a party for 5,000 guests, where her daughters performed on the piano. Even while trusting Julia with this authority and openly discussing their relationship, Richard never emancipated Julia Chinn; she remained his property until her death. Joining me to discuss Julia Chinn is Dr. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, the Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, and author of an upcoming book on Julia Chinn. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is an artist rendition by Matthew Weflen.

Sources:

“Disorderly Communion: Julia Chinn, Richard Mentor Johnson, and Life in an Interracial, Antebellum, Southern Church,” by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, The Journal of African American History, Volume 105, Number 2, Spring 2020.

The Erasure and Resurrection of Julia Chinn, U.S. Vice President Richard M. Johnson’s Black Wife,” by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, Association of Black Women Historians, March 3, 2019.

“He became the nation’s ninth vice president. She was his enslaved wife.” by Ronald G. Shafer, Washington Post, February 7, 2021.

“The Lost Story Of Julia Chinn,” by Leslie Potter, Kentucky Life, February 19, 2020.

“Choctaw Indian Academy,” by Deana Thomas, Explore Kentucky History.

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In fall 1947 the Shell Oil Company hired a Women’s Travel Director named Carol Lane, who served in the role until she retired in 1974. Lane’s job was to encourage women to travel, showing them the joys of touring the country by car. Lane herself traveled around the United States and Canada, speaking to women’s clubs and on radio and TV, giving travel tips and packing demonstrations. Eventually, she even awarded women who developed local travel safety programs with the Carol Lane Award. So who was Carol Lane? To learn the answer to that question, I’m joined on this episode by historian Melissa Dollman, author of the digital dissertation, Changing Lanes: A Reanimation of Shell Oil’s Carol Lane, which was the source I consulted in writing the introduction to this episode. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The image is from the booklet Carol Lane’s Dress-O-Graph, from 1953, which is in the public domain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The rise of Nazism before World War II wasn’t limited to Germany. The German-Americna Bund (Amerikadeutscher Volksbund) formed in Buffalo, New York, in 1936, to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany. It quickly grew to 70 local groups around the country, with 20 training camps where kids aged 8-18 practiced military drills and wore Nazi-style uniforms. By 1939, 20,000 people attended the Bund’s Pro American Rally in Madison Square Garden. When Prohibition ended in 1933, Jewish American gangsters who had been running liquor businesses suddenly had more time on their hands, and they decided to fight back against the Bund. In Newark, New Jersey, Abner “Longie” Zwillman formed a secret organization called the Minutemen to fight the Nazis. The Minutemen, who operated from 1933 to 1941, would break up Bund meetings using their fists, baseball bats, and stink bombs. The Minutemen were based in New Jersey, but Jewish gangsters around the country fought the Bund, including in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. To help us learn more, I’m joined on this episode by Leslie K. Barry, author of the historic novel, Newark Minutemen: A True 1930s Legend about One Man's Mission to Save a Nation's Soul Without Losing His Own, whose uncle was a Minuteman in Newark in the 1930s. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The image is: “German American Bund parade in New York City on East 86th St.,” World-Telegram photo, New York, 1937, Public Domain. The audio clip is from the German American Bund Rally on February 20, 1939, and is in the Public Domain.   Additional Sources:

“There Were American Nazi Summer Camps Across the US in the 1930s,” by George Dvorsky, Gizmodo, November 19, 2015.

“American Nazis in the 1930s—The German American Bund,” by Alan Taylor, The Atlantic, June 5, 2017.

“When Nazis Took Manhattan,” by Sarah Kate Kramer, NPR: All Things Considered, February 20, 2019.

“American Nazis and Nazi Sympathizers Have Been Around Since the 1930’s,” by Eric Ginsburg, Teen Vogue, November 26, 2018.

“American Nazism and Madison Square Garden,” The National World War II Museum, April 14, 2021.

“Field of Vision - A Night at the Garden [video],” directed by Marshall Curry.

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Mary Ann Shadd Cary, born in Delaware in 1823, was a teacher, a writer, an abolitionist, a suffragist, and a lawyer, and is considered to be the first Black woman to publish and edit a newspaper in North America, The Provincial Freeman. When abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked readers of his newspaper in 1848 for suggestions on how to improve life for African Americans, Shadd Cary answered: “We should do more and talk less,” and she spent her life following that motto in both the United States and in Canada, despite the challenges she faced both as an African American and as a woman. To help us understand more, I’m joined by Dr. Jane Rhodes and Dr. Kristin Moriah. Dr. Rhodes is a Professor of Black Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago and author of Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century. Dr. Moriah is Assistant Professor of African American Literary Studies at Queen's University and a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Black Digital Research (CBDR) at Penn State where her projects include digitizing Mary Ann Shadd Cary's papers. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The image is the only known photograph of Mary Ann Shadd Cary; the photographer is unknown.

Additional Selected Sources:

“Overlooked No More: How Mary Ann Shadd Cary Shook Up the Abolitionist Movement,” by Megan Specia, The New York Times, June 6, 2018.

“Mary Ann Shadd Cary: History,” by Adrienne Shadd, Library and Archives Canada, November 1, 2019.

“Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Lawyer, Educator, Suffragist,” by Jennifer Davis, Library of Congress, February 28, 2019.

Black Women's Organizing Project, Center for Black Digital Research, Penn State

“Mary Ann Shadd Cary: In the Here and Now (Day 1) [video],” Recorded on October 1, 2021.

“Mary Ann Shadd Cary: In the Here and Now (Day 2) [video],” Recorded on October 2, 2021

“Mary Ann Shadd Cary Event Series: The Power of Black Art [video],” Recorded on October 9, 2021.

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In February, 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression, a small group of unionized workers at the Electric Auto-Lite company of Toledo, Ohio, went on strike. When management failed to sign a promised contract by the April 1 deadline, more workers went on strike. And this time they had help from the Unemployed League. What started as a small walkout turned into a massive demonstration by 10,000 strikers, and a battle with the Ohio National Guard, and is now regarded as one of the most important strikes in U.S. history. Joining me on this episode to help us learn more about the Auto-Lite strike is labor historian Dr. Bradley Sommer. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is the front page of The Toledo News-Bee on May 24, 1934.

Selected Sources:

“The More Things Stay the Same: Lessons from 1934,” by Bradley Sommer, Labor and Working-Class History Association, June 17, 2015.

“From Toledo to Standing Rock,” by Bradley Sommer, Jacobin, October 2016.

“Lou Hebert on the Auto-Lite Labor Strike,” C-SPAN, July 22, 2019.

“Auto-Lite Strike,” Toledo Lucas County Public Library.

“Blue-collar origins: Toledo is a city built on the back of labor,” by Jay Skebba, The Toledo Blade, September 2, 2019.

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In September 1915, four suffragists set off from the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California, in a brand-new Overland 6 convertible to make the 3,000-mile drive across the country to deliver a petition for women’s suffrage to President Woodrow Wilson on the opening day of Congress in December. Along the way they faced illness, terrible driving conditions, and opposition to women’s suffrage.  Joining me to help us learn more about the road trip, and especially the unsung Swedish immigrant heroines, driver Maria Kindberg and mechanic Ingeborg Kindstedt, is historian and activist, Anne Gass, author of the 2021 book, We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “Suffrage envoy Sara Bard Field left and her driver, Maria Kindberg center, and machinist Ingeborg Kindstedt right during their cross-country journey to present suffrage petitions to Congress, September-December. United States Washington D.C, 1915,” Public Domain, Located at the Library of Congress. The audio recording clip is: “Fall in Line (Suffrage March),” Written by Zena S. Hawn, and Performed by the Victor Military Band on July 15, 1914, Public Domain, Internet Archive.

Selected Additional Sources:

“Rhode Island’s Two Unheralded Suffragists,” Small State Big History, by Russell DeSimone, January 11, 2020

“Historical Timeline of the National Womans Party,” Library of Congress

“Traveling for Suffrage Part 1: Two women, a cat, a car, and a mission,” by Patri O'Gan, National Museum of American HIstory, March 5, 2014

“Maria Kindberg,” Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame

“Ingeborg Kindstedt,” Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame

“Sara Bard Field (1882-1974),” by Tim Barnes, Oregon Encyclopedia

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Enslaved Africans in what is now New York State and in the Middle Passage resisted their enslavement, despite the risk of doing so. In the previously accepted history of these slave revolts, the assumption was that men led the resistance, but Dr. Rebecca Hall dug deeper into the records and read against the grain to find the women warriors who fought for their freedom. Joining me to help us learn more is Dr. Rebecca Hall, a scholar, activist and educator, who writes and speaks on the history of race, gender, law and resistance, and author of the recent highly-acclaimed graphic novel, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “Negro quarters, T.J. Fripp plantation, St. Helena Island (near Beaufort), S.C.” from the Library of Congress.

Selected Additional Sources:

Benton, Ned. “Dating the Start and End of Slavery in New York,”New York Slavery Records Index: Records of Enslaved Persons and Slave Holders in New York from 1525 though the Civil War, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, “Middle Passage, Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Slavery and Remembrance.

Hall, Rebecca. “Not Killing Me Softly: African American Women, Slave Revolts, And Historical Constructions of Racialized Gender,” Vol. 1, Issue 2 of The Freedom Center Journal, a joint publication of University of Cincinnati College of Law and the National Underground Railroad Center, June, (2010).

National Park Service, “The Middle Passage.”

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From September 1942 to December 1944, over 1000 American women served in the war effort as Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), flying 80% of all ferrying missions and delivering 12,652 aircraft of 78 types. They also transported cargo, test flew planes, demoed aircraft that the male pilots were scared to fly, simulated missions, and towed targets for live anti-aircraft artillery practice. The WASP did not fly in combat missions, but their work was dangerous, and 38 were killed in accidents. Even with the enormous contributions they made in World War II, the WASP weren’t recognized as part of the military until decades later when they were finally granted veteran status. Joining me to help us learn more about the WASP is Katherine Sharp Landdeck, Associate Professor at Texas Woman's University, and author of the definitive book on the Women Airforce Service Pilots, The Women With Silver Wings. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “WASP Frances Green, Margaret Kirchner, Ann Waldner and Blanche Osborn leave their B-17, called Pistol Packin' Mama, during ferry training at Lockbourne Army Air Force base in Ohio. They're carrying their parachutes.” from the National Archives and in the public domain. Selected Additional Sources:

Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), Women in the Army, US Army.

“Female WWII Pilots: The Original Fly Girls,” by Susan Stamberg, NPR, March 9, 2010.

“Remembering the WASPs: Women who were aviation trailblazers,” CBS News, June 1, 2014.

“Flying on the Homefront: Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP),” by Dorothy Cochrane, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, May 20, 2020.

“Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of WWII: STEM in 30 Live Chat [Video],” Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, September 12, 2020.

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Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was born in China in 1896 but lived most of her life in the United States, where, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, she had no path to naturalization until the law changed in 1943. Even though it would not benefit her for decades, Mabel Lee worked for women’s suffrage, leading the New York City Suffrage Parade on horseback at the age of only 16. Lee was the first Chinese woman to earn a PhD in Economics in the United States, graduating from Columbia University in 1921 with a dissertation entitled: “The Economic History of China: With Special Reference to Agriculture,” and then spent her life helping the Chinese community in New York City through her work with as director of the First Chinese Baptist Church of New York City.  Joining me to help us learn more about Mabel Lee is Dr. Cathleen Cahill, Associate Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University and author of the 2020 book Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Radiogram; 6/26/1937; Case #12-943; Chinese Exclusion Act case file for Mabel Lee (Ping Hua Lee);” from Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, ca. 1882 - ca. 1960; Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85; National Archives at New York, New York, NY. Selected Sources:

“Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee,” National Park Service

“The 16-Year-Old Chinese Immigrant Who Helped Lead a 1912 US Suffrage March,” by Michael Lee, History.com, March 19, 2021

“Asian American Legacy: Dr. Mabel Lee,” by Tim Tseng, December 12, 2013.

“Overlooked No More: Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Suffragist With a Distinction,” by Jia Lynn Yang, The New York Times, September 19, 2020.

“Mabel Ping-Hua Lee ’1916: A Pioneer of the Suffrage Movement,” by Lois Elfman, Barnard Magazine, Fall 2020.

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Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1905, artist Loïs Mailou Jones’s career spanned much of the 20th Century as both a painter and a teacher of generations of Black artists at Howard University. Jones faced racial discrimination in the US throughout much of her long life, and found refuge and inspiration in the Harlem Renaissance Movement and in the expatriate community of Black artists in Paris. Her 1953 marriage to Haitian artist Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noel, and later research trips to Africa further influenced her work. Her many important paintings include The Ascent of Ethiopia (1932); Les Fétiches (1938); Self-Portrait (1940); Mob Victim (Meditation) (1944); Jardin du Luxembourg (1948); Jeune Fille Française (1951); Ode to Kinshasa (1972); Ubi Girl from Tai Region (1972); Suriname (1982); and Glyphs (1985). Joining me to help us learn more about Loïs Mailou Jones is writer Jennifer Higgie, author of the new book, The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution, and Resilience: Five Hundred Years of Women's Self Portraits. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is Loïs Mailou Jones, 1937, from the Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre-Noël Trust. Other Selected Sources:

“Lois Mailou Jones, 92, Painter and Teacher” by Holland Cotter, New York Times, June 13, 1998.

“Lois Mailou Jones: An Indefatigable Black Woman Artist,” by Betty Perry, The Washington Post, February 23, 1983.

“An Interview with Lois Mailou Jones,” by Charles H. Rowell, Callaloo, Vol. 12 No. 2, p. 357-378.

“Loïs Mailou Jones: Creating A New African-American Image,” by Greg Cook, WBUR, February 27, 2013.

“Interview with Lois Mailou Jones [video],” Good Morning America, February 1, 1996.

“Loïs Mailou Jones and David C. Driskell: Intersecting Legacies [video],” The Phillips Collection, October 28, 2020.

“Remembering The Masters: Lois Mailou Jones [video],” Sankofa Studios, March 16, 2020.

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In October 1805, the Yakama encountered the Lewis and Clark Expedition near the confluence of the Yakima and Columbia rivers. By fifty years later, so many European and American trappers, traders, and eventually, settlers, had arrived in the area, putting demands on the land and resources, that federal government officials called a council meeting with the local tribal nations to negotiate a treaty by which the native people would move on to reservations in exchange for federal benefits.  The tribal nations, including the Yakama, signed the treaty--reluctantly--in June 1855, but it had to be ratified by the US Senate before it would go into effect. In the meantime, miners and settlers were supposed to stay off of Yakama land. However, with the discovery of gold, the miners started to trespass, stealing horses and assaulting women in the process. Yakama warriors killed minors in response. Soon, war broke out between the Yakama and the federal government, lasting until 1858. On March 8, 1859, the US Senate finally ratified the 1855 treaty. Joining me to help us learn more about the Yakama War is Emily Washines, who is an enrolled Yakama Nation tribal member with Cree and Skokomish lineage. Emily is a scholar whose research topics ​ include the Yakama War, Native women, traditional knowledge, resource management, fishing rights, and food sovereignty. She runs the Native Friends Blog and hosts the War Cry Podcast. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is courtesy of Emily Washines.

Suggested Organization for Donations: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women USA

Selected Sources:

Yakama Nation History, Yakama Nation Website

“This Week Then: Take a Look Back on the Yakama War” by Alan Stein, Seattle Magazine, November 27, 2018

“It Happened Here: Treaty of 1855 took land, created the Yakama Nation” by Donald W. Meyers, Yakima Herald, June 4, 2017

“Yakama War History Project Seeks Descendants Of U.S. Army Combatants” by Tom Banse, NW News Network, August 9, 2017

“Yakama War: Ayat” Native Friends

“Yakama Indian War begins on October 5, 1855” by Paula Becker, History Link, February 26, 2003

The 1858 Yakama War...Fort Simcoe's Story of the 9th U.S. Army Infantry and their Western Prong Attack Campaign, by Steve Charles Plucker, 2016

“The Yakama War [video],” KCTS9, November 12, 2018

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In Autumn of 1621, a group of Pilgrims from the Mayflower voyage and Wampanoag men, led by their sachem Massasoit, ate a feast together. The existence of that meal, which held little importance to either the Pilgrims or the Wampanoag, is the basis of the Thanksgiving myth. The myth, re-told in school Thanksgiving pageants and TV shows, is not accurate and is harmful to Native people, especially to the Wampanoag.  In 1970, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts planned a banquet to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. They asked an Aquinnah Wampanoag man, Frank James, also known as Wamsutta, to speak at the banquet. However, when they learned what he was planning to say, the true history, they forbade his speech. Frank James would not give a speech that they rewrote, and instead he planned the first National Day of Mourning on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth. Fifty one years later the United American Indians of New England still meet at noon on Cole’s Hill on the US Thanksgiving Holiday to remember the genocide of Native people and the theft of Native lands and erasure of Native culture. Joining me to help us learn more about the Wampanoag and the dangers of the Thanksgiving myth is Kisha James, enrolled Aquinnah Wampanoag, one of the organizers of the National Day of Mourning, and granddaughter of Frank James. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Massasoit and His Warriors,” 1857. Photograph in the LIbrary of Congress.

Buy Indigenous:

Kisha’s thread of Indigenous businesses

Information about the The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990

Suggested Organization for Donations:

North American Indian Center of Boston

United American Indians of New England

Lakota Kidz

Selected Sources:

“Wampanoag History,” Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah)

“The Myths of the Thanksgiving Story and the Lasting Damage They Imbue” by Claire Bugos, Smithsonian Magazine, November 26, 2019

1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving by Catherine Grace

This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving by David J. Silverman 

“Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving Is Wrong By Maya Salam, The New York Times, Nov. 21, 2017

“History of King Philip’s War,” by Rebecca Beatrice Books, History of Massachusetts Blog, May 31, 2017.

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Before the arrival of Europeans, the Ojibwe nation occupied much of the Lake Superior region, including what is now Ontario in Canada and Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in the United States. In 1850, President Zachary Taylor’s administration, in response to demands from European Americans, planned to force the Ojibwe of Wisconsin west of the Mississippi in violation of signed treaties. They planned to bring the Ojibwe to Minnesota from Wisconsin in late fall so that they would have to stay for the winter, wearing down their resistance to relocation. Nearly 3000 Ojibwe men made the long journey to Sandy Lake, Minnesota, where they waited for weeks for a government agent to arrive and even longer for what turned out to be spoiled food and only a small portion of the payment and goods they were due. The conditions were so poor that 150 men died of disease, starvation, or freezing. On the treacherous return journey to Wisconsin another 200 men died. In 1852, Chief Buffalo, the principal chief of the Lake Superior Ojibwe, traveled to Washington, DC, by birchbark canoe with three other men, to press President Millard Fillmore to cancel the removal order. They managed to find an audience with Fillmore, who upon hearing about the broken treaty promises and the tragedy at Sandy Lake, agreed to cancel the removal order and work on a new treaty. The 1854 Treaty of LaPointe allowed the Ojibwe to stay in their traditional territories and created permanent reservations of land for many of the bands, including the Red Cliff. Under the treaties, the tribes reserved certain rights, including rights to hunt, fish, and gather on the lands that they ceded. In the more than 150 years since the 1854 Treaty of LaPointe, the sovereignty of the Ojibwe people has been threatened time and time again, and it’s taken Ojibwe activism to protect the rights. Joining me to help us learn more about the Red Cliff Ojibwe, the importance of treaties, and the Native activism needed to defend them is Dr. Katrina Phillips, an enrolled member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Assistant Professor of Native American History at Macalester College, and author of Staging Indigeneity: Salvage Tourism and the Performance of Native American History. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is Mitaawangaa, or Sandy Beach, on the shores of Frog Bay Tribal National Park. Photo by Katrina Phillips.

Suggested Organization for Donations:

Dream of Wild Health

The Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center (MIWRC)

MIGIZI

Recommended Kids’ Books:

Indigenous Peoples’ Day by Katrina Phillips

The Disastrous Wrangel Island Expedition by Katrina Phillips

Fry Bread by by Kevin Noble Maillard

We are Grateful by Traci Sorell

Bowwow Powwow by Brenda J. Child

Johnny’s Pheasant by Cheryl Minnema

Selected Sources:

"When Grandma Went to Washington: Ojibwe Activism and the Battle over the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore," by Phillips, Katrina. Native American and Indigenous Studies, vol. 8 no. 2, 2021, p. 29-61. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/804026.

“Miskwaabekong History,” Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

“Origins and History, Tribal Government,” Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

“Ojibwe Treaty Rights,” Milwaukee Public Museum

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Prior to World War II, most of the US military deemed the territory of Alaska as militarily unimportant, to the point where the Alaska National Guard units were stationed instead in Washington state in August of 1941. That changed when the Japanese invaded and occupied two Alaskan islands in June of 1942.  The US government responded first by evacuating Unangax̂ villagers and forcibly interning them in Southeast Alaska in facilities without plumbing or electricity for two years where many died of disease. To protect the Alaskan territory from further invasion, Major Marvin R. “Muktuk” conceived of a plan to defend the Alaskan coast with local citizens. The more than 6,300 members of the Alaska Territorial Guard (ATG) were as young as 12 and as old as 80 and represented 107 Alaskan communities and many different ethnic groups, including Unangax̂ , Inupiaq, Tlingit, and, Yup'ik, among others. Without the ATG serving as the eyes and ears of the US military in Alaska, the Japanese may well have invaded the mainland of the territory, setting up an ideal location from which to invade the United States.  To help us learn more about the Alaska Territorial Guard I’m joined by Dr. Holly Guise, who is Iñupiaq and an Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on gender, Unangax̂ (Aleut) relocation and internment camps, Native activism/resistance, and Indigenous military service during the war. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image shows four Alaska Territorial Guardsmen being sworn in for an assignment in Barrow, Alaska, from the Ernest H. Gruening Papers, Alaska & Polar Regions Collections, Archives, University of Alaska Fairbanks. We ask that you consider supporting the efforts of Atuxforever, a nonprofit with the goal of raising funds for Attuans to travel back to their home island of Attu for pilgrimages and cultural revitalization. 

Sources and Links:

World War II Alaska

“Sens. Murkowski and Begich Gain Victory for Alaska Territorial Guard,” July 23, 2009

“Under threat of invasion 75 years ago, Alaskan natives joined the Army to defend homeland,” by Sean Kimmons, Army News Service, November 16, 2017.

“Searching Alaska for the Alaska Territorial Guard,” State of Alaska Website

“Alaska Territorial Guard,” National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian

Alaska’s Digital Archive

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The Stockbridge-Munsee Community, the People of the Waters that Are Never Still, were forced to move many times after they first encountered Europeans. In 1609, Dutch trader Henry Hudson sailed up the Mahicannituck, the River that Flows Both Ways, into Mohican land. By 1614 there was a Dutch trading post established on a nearby island to take advantage of the beaver and otter availability. The arrival of the Europeans changed the economic pattern of the Mohicans, and brought both disease and religion into their land. The Mohican people, part of the Eastern Algonquian family of tribes, originally occupied large areas of land in what is now New England and the Hudson River Valley, including parts of what is now Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and were neighbors to the Lenape, to whom they are related. Over time, the Mohican people and the Munsees, who were also Lenape, and whose language and lifestyles were similar, affiliated with each other.  After the arrival of the Europeans, the Mohicans were driven out of their land, into what would become Massachusetts and Connecticut, where they were introduced to Christianity and became known as the Stockbridge Moohicans. Then they were driven into New York, then to Indiana, then to Wisconsin and then further into Wisconsin. By the late 19th century, the Stockbridge-Munsee, like nearly every Native nation within the United States, was assigned to a reservation. Theirs was largely pine forest that was difficult to farm. Reservation land was portioned and allotted to individuals and families. Much of the land was sold to lumber companies or lost when the taxes couldn’t be paid. By the 1920s the Stockbridge Munsee were virtually landless and living in poverty. When Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, Native communities were able to obtain funds from the federal government to reorganize their tribal governments and recover some of their land. By the end of 1937, the Stockbridge-Munsee had a new Constitution. The Stockbridge-Munsee Community is still located on the reservation in Wisconsin, which currently includes a little over 17,000 acres of trust land and around 7,500 acres of non-trust land. Around half of the tribe’s population of 1500 people live on or near the reservation. In 1999, they established a Tribal Historic Preservation office to formalize the work of protecting burial sites and other cultural areas in its Eastern homelands. I’m joined in this episode by Heather Bruegl, who is enrolled Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and first line descendant Stockbridge Munsee and who is the Director of Education at the Forge Project. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is “Papscanee Island Nature Preserve,” by Andy Arthur, May 12, 2013. (CC BY 2.0) We ask that you consider supporting the efforts of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community's Historic Preservation program with a donation. 

Sources and links:

Brief History, Stockbridge Munsee

Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican History, PBS

Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

“'It's Been Erased': Stockbridge Mohicans Retell, Reclaim Their Story In Berkshires,” by Nancy Eve Cohen, New England Public Media, January 16, 2021

“Mohicans, forced from their ancestral lands, still connect to their heritage here,” The Altamont Enterprise Bethlehem, Thursday, September 27, 2018

“Native American and Indigenous Studies: Stockbridge Munsee Community,” Library Guide, Williams College

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The late 19th Century ushered in an evolution in women’s fashion from the Victorian “True Woman” whose femininity was displayed in wide skirts and petticoats, the “New Woman” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was modern and youthful in a shirtwaist and bell-shaped skirt. Earlier fashion experimentation by feminists in the mid-19th Century had failed to catch on and had interfered with their ability to inspire change as they were labeled radical for their sartorial choices. Feminists in the late 19th Century chose a different path, using the popular fashions of the day to appear respectable as they pushed for rights for women. The mass availability of the shirtwaist also helped to democratize fashion so that working class, immigrant, and African-American women were all able to adopt the costume of the day as they made their demands for better working conditions and increased rights and access. In this episode I’m joined by Dr. Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, author of the upcoming book, Dressed for Freedom: The Fashionable Politics of American Feminism, as we discuss the uses of fashion by feminists at the turn of the 20th Century. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image is: “Four African American women seated on steps of building at Atlanta University, Georgia.“ Atlanta, Georgia, ca. 1899. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/95507126. Additional sources and links:

“Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney Calls for 'Equal Rights for Women' with Suffragette-Themed Met Gala Dress” by Virginia Chamlee, People Magazine, September 14, 2021.

“Schools enforce dress codes all the time. So why not masks?” by By Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, The Washington Post, August 30, 2021.

Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman, 1895-1915 by Martha H. Patterson, 2005.

“The Gibson Girl’s America: Drawings by Charles Dana Gibson,” Library of Congress.

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After the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, enfranchising (some) women, lots of questions remained. If women could vote, could they serve on juries? Could they hold public office? What about the array of state-laws that still privileged husbands and fathers over wives and daughters in regard to property and earnings rights?  In February 1921, Alice Paul, head of the National Woman’s Party declared: “Now that political freedom has been won, we hope to wipe out sex discrimination in law, so that the legal status of women will be self-respecting.” Their strategy to accomplish this, on the advice of legal scholar Professor Albert Levitt of George Washington University was to push for a new constitutional amendment, which became known as the Equal Rights Amendment. Between 1923 and 1932, Congress held six hearings on the ERA, but it faced fierce opposition until the mid-1930s. By the mid-1930s, support for the ERA began to increase dramatically, as congressional subcommittees started to report the amendment favorably nearly every year after 1936.  In 1940 the Republican Party added the ERA to its party platform. Four years later the Democratic party did the same.  On October 12, 1971, the House of Representatives finally voted on the ERA, introduced by Michigan Democrat Martha Griffiths. The vote passed 354 to 24, with 51 not voting. On March 22, 1972, the Senate also passed the bill, 84-8, with 8 not voting. Then the fight moved to the states. As of October 2021, 38 states have ratified the amendment, the final three states coming long after the original deadline, but the amendment has not been added to the Constitution. I’m joined in this episode by Dr. Rebecca DeWolf, author of the new book: Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment, 1920–1963, who also graciously fact checked the introduction to the episode. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image is: “A group of young members of the National Woman's Party before the Capitol. They are about to invade the offices of the senators and congressmen from their states, to ask them to vote for Equal Rights.“ Washington D.C, ca. 1923. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/mnwp000193/.

Additional Sources and Links:

Equal Rights Amendment, Alice Paul Institute

The Equal Rights Amendment Explained, The Brennan Center for Justice

“Why the Equal Rights Amendment Is Still Not Part of the Constitution: A brief history of the long battle to pass what would now be the 28th Amendment” by Lila Thulin, Smithsonian Magazine

“The Long Road to Equality: What Women Won from the ERA Ratification Effort,” Library of Congress

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Writer, musician, and political activist Zitkála-Šá, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was born on February 22, 1876, on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where she lived until she was eight. When Zitkála-Šá was eight years old, missionaries came to the reservation to recruit children to go to White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute. Despite her mother’s pleading, Zitkála-Šá begged to go to the school with her older brother. She later wrote that she regretted the decision almost immediately, but after three years in the boarding school she no longer felt at home on the reservation either. Throughout her life Zitkála-Šá continued to live in two worlds, using her writing and speaking to advocate for the rights of Native Americans. She taught at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, the most well-known of the off reservation boarding schools, where she came into conflict with the school’s founder and headmaster Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, whose motto was “Kill the Indian, save the man.” She studied violin and wrote articles in Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Monthly, critical of the boarding schools and the trauma the children experienced. Prof. William F. Hanson of Brigham Young University she wrote an opera, the Sun Dance Opera, based on the sacred Sioux ritual that had been banned by the federal government.  In 1926, Zitkála-Šá and her husband, Captain Raymond Bonnin, who was also Yankton Dakota, co-founded the National Council of American Indians to "help Indians help themselves" in government relations. Many conflicts had to be resolved by Congress and the Bonnins were instrumental in representing tribal interests. Zitkála-Šá was the council’s president, public speaker, and major fundraiser, until her death in 1938. To help us learn more, I’m joined by Dr. P. Jane Hafen (Taos Pueblo), Professor Emerita of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the editor of two books of Zitkála-Šá’s writings: ​​Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and the Sun Dance Opera and "Help Indians Help Themselves": The Later Writings of Gertrude Simmons-Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa), who graciously assisted in fact checking the introduction to this episode. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “Zitkala Sa, Sioux Indian and activist, c. 1898,” by Gertrude Kasebier, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

Recommended Organization for Donation: Native American Rights Fund

Additional Sources and Links:

American Indian Stories, Zitkála-Šá

Impressions of an Indian Childhood by Zitkála-Šá

Oklahoma's Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery by Zitkala-S̈a, Charles H. Fabens, and Matthew K. Sniffen. Office of the Indian Rights Association, 1924. 

Red Bird Sings: The Story of Zitkala-Sa, Native American Author, Musician, and Activist by Gina Capaldi (Author) and Q. L. Pearce (Author)

Zitkala-Ša (Red Bird / Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), National Park Service

“Zitkála-Šá: Trailblazing American Indian Composer and Writer” [video], UNLADYLIKE2020: THE CHANGEMAKERS, PBS.

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Nearly 350,000 American women served in the US military during World War II. Although the women in the military didn’t engage in combat their presence was vital to the American effort, in clerical work as well as in driving trucks, operating radios and telephones, repairing and flying planes, and of course, in nursing. Women’s active duty was a temporary wartime measure, but when the war ended, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and General Omar Bradley, among others, argued for the continued presence of women in the military. Rep. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine introduced the Women's Armed Services Integration Act to Congress in January 1948, and President Truman signed the bill into law on June 12, 1948. From the end of World War II through the Cold War, women in the United States military navigated a space that welcomed and needed their service but put limits on their participation. To help us learn more, I’m joined by Dr. Tanya Roth, author of the new book, Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945–1980. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “WAF Officer candidate salutes in front of US flag. Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. November 1952.” The image source is the U.S. Air Force, and it is in the Public Domain.

Additional Sources:

“Pregnant Women to Be Allowed To Stay in the Military Forces,” New York Times, July 8, 1975

“Over 200 Years of Service: The History of Women in the U.S. Military,” uso.org.

“Women in the Army,” U.S. Army.

“Truman and Women’s Rights,” Truman Library Institute.

“Women in the Military Academies: 40 Years Later,” Department of Defense.

“Women in the Vietnam War,” History.com.

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Slavery was legal in Maryland until November 1, 1864, when a new state constitution prohibited the practice of slavery. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation the year before had declared slaves in the Confederate states to be free, but Maryland was in the union and not included in the proclamation. From the late 18th Century until the Civil War, enslaved families in Prince George’s County, Maryland, brought over a thousand legal suits against hundreds of slaveholding families, arguing for their freedom. In these freedom suits, enslaved individuals sued for their freedom based on issues of breach of contract or unjust detainment. When an enslaved person won a freedom suit the individual would be granted their freedom, and it could sometimes provide the basis for future lawsuits by family members, but the institution of slavery persisted. In 1791, Edward Queen, an enslaved man at the White Marsh Plantation in Prince George's County, sued Rev. John Ashton, a Jesuit slaveholder, for his freedom in the Maryland General Court. In Edward Queen’s petition he said he was “descended from a freewoman,” his grandmother, Mary Queen, and thus was being illegally held in bondage. In May 1794 the all-white jury decided that Mary Queen was not a slave, and thus Edward Queen should be freed and awarded 1997 pounds of tobacco, at least a third of which went to Queen’s lawyers. Despite legal maneuvering by slaveholders to make freedom suits more difficult for the enslaved, as many as 50 of Edward Queen’s enslaved relatives won their own freedom suits on the argument that Mary Queen was not a slave, and thus her descendants should not be enslaved. Joining me to help us learn more about freedom suits is William G. Thomas III, the Angle Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History at the University of Nebraska, and author of A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: "Twenty-eight fugitives escaping from the Eastern Shore of Maryland," Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. The image is in the public domain. Additional Sources:

O Say Can You See: Early Washington, D.C., Law & Family. William G. Thomas III, Kaci Nash, Laura Weakly, Karin Dalziel, and Jessica Dussault. University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

“Anna: One woman's quest for freedom in early Washington, D.C.,” Animating History, Michael Burton, Kwakiutl Dreher, William G. Thomas III. 2018.

The Georgetown Slavery Archive

“Rev. John Ashton,” Archives of Maryland.

“Missouri’s Dred Scott Case, 1846-1857,” Missouri State Archives.

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Over a decade before Julia Child’s The French Chef appeared on TV, a Black woman chef hosted her own, very popular cooking show on WDSU-TV in New Orleans. At a time when families were just beginning to own televisions, Chef Lena Richard’s show was so popular that it aired twice a week. Richard started working as a cook as a teenager for the wealthy Vairin family who employed her mom as a domestic servant. When their cook left, Alice Vairin gave Richard a trial run as cook and was so impressed that she hired her on the spot. Vairin later sent Richard to cooking schools, first locally and then at the prestigious eight-week Fannie Farmer Cooking School in Boston. In addition to her television show, Richard’s storied career included launching a catering business; stints as head chef at the Bird and Bottle Inn in Garrison, New York, and the Travis House Restaurant and Inn, in Colonial Williamsburg; two of her own restaurants in New Orleans, Lena’s Eatery and Lena Richard’s Gumbo House; a cooking school; a frozen food business; and a best-selling Creole cookbook, New Orleans Cookbook. Joining me to help us learn more about Chef Lena Richard are two guests: Chef Dee Lavigne of New Orleans, owner of Deelightful Cupcakes and Assistant Production Producer for the Sunday Morning News Food Segment on WWL-TV4; and Dr. Ashley Rose Young, Historian of the American Food History Project at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode images Courtesy of Newcomb Archive, Vorhoff Library Special Collections, Tulane University.

Sources:

“Meet Lena Richard, the Celebrity Chef Who Broke Barriers in the Jim Crow South,” by Lily Katzman, Smithsonian Magazine, June 12, 2020

“The Story of Lena Richard,” by Sarah Nerney, Colonial Williamsburg, August 22, 2020.

“Creole Cuisine: Lena Richard,” Google Arts & Culture, based on the exhibit in the Southern Food and Beverage Museum.

“Learning from the best: Lena Richard’s Creole Cookbook,” Rachael Garder-Stephen, Adam Matthew: A SAGE Publishing Company Blog, March 12, 2021.

“America's Unknown Celebrity Chef,” Sidedoor Podcast, June 9, 2020.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC), in 2018, 13% of the US population was Black and African American, but 42% of new HIV diagnoses in the US were from Black and African American people. This discrepancy is not new.  On June 5, 1981, the CDC first published an article in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) titled “Pneumocystis Pneumonia” that suggested that there might be “a cellular-immune dysfunction related to a common exposure that predisposes individuals to opportunistic infections such as pneumocystosis and candidiasis” to explain a number of infections they were seeing among gay men. This early identification of HIV/AIDS as a disease of white gay men colored the response to the epidemic. As gay men organized AIDS education and support networks they built organizations staffed by white volunteers and situated in gay neighborhoods in major urban centers. Because of racism and segregation many of those gay neighborhoods were largely white, and the education and support campaigns didn’t reach the Black and brown communities that were also affected by the disease. In response, African American AIDS activists formed their own organizations from the beginning of the crisis. African American AIDS activism was diverse and creative from the early days of the pandemic, and it continues today, but it’s often been missing from popular media and historical writing about AIDS. In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the background of African American AIDS activism and interviews Dan Royles, Assistant Professor of History at Florida International University and author of To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle against HIV/AIDS, which was recently named a Finalist in the 2021 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image by Tobe Mokolo on Unsplash. Sources:

To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against Hiv/AIDS, by Dan Royles, 2020.

“Forty years after first documented AIDS cases, survivors reckon with 'dichotomy of feelings,'” by Alex Berg, NBC News, June 5, 2021.

“Pneumocystis Pneumonia --- Los Angeles,” MMWR, Reported by MS Gottlieb, MD, HM Schanker, MD, PT Fan, MD, A Saxon, MD, JD Weisman, DO, Div of Clinical Immunology-Allergy; Dept of Medicine, UCLA School of Medicine; I Pozalski, MD, Cedars-Mt. Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles; Field services Div, Epidemiology Program Office, CDC. June 5, 1981

“HIV and African American People,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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In the mid-1960s, to protest discriminatory hiring practices, Chicano groups in Colorado called for a boycott of the Coors Brewing Company, launching what would become a decades-long boycott that brought together a coalition of activists that would include not just Chicano and Latino groups, but also African American groups, union organizers, LGBT activists, students, environmentalists and feminists. These groups had a variety of motivations for their involvement in the boycott and varied success in achieving their goals. Although the formal boycott ended by the late 1980s, some activists continue to boycott Coors beer to today. In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of the Coors boycott and interviews Allyson P. Brantley, Assistant Professor of History & Director of Honors and Interdisciplinary Initiatives at the University of La Verne in Southern California, and author of the 2021 book Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors & Remade American Consumer Activism. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: 1970s-era “Boycott Coors Beer” broadside. Printed by the Howard Quinn Co. Sources:

Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors & Remade American Consumer Activism by Allyson P. Brantley.

“The Coors Boycott: When A Beer Can Signaled Your Politics,” by B. Erin Cole & Allyson Brantley, Colorado Public Radio, October 3, 2014,

“‘A Political Fight Over Beer’: The 1977 Coors Beer Boycott, and the Relationship Between Labour–Gay Alliances and LGBT Social Mobility,” by Kieran Blake, Midland Historical Review, January 24, 2020.

“TEAMSTERS PRIDE AT WORK: A LOOK BACK AT THE COORS BOYCOTT,” International Brotherhood of Teamster, June 2, 2017.

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In Nineteenth Century America there was a strong reformist push to know and improve the self. One key tactic Americans used to learn more about themselves was phrenological readings. They would pay practical phrenologists, like Orson Squire Fowler and his younger brother, Lorenzo Niles Fowler for readings of their skulls or their children’s skulls.  In Lorenzo Fowler’s reading of Emily Sawyer, he concluded a thirteen-page analysis by saying: “Cultivate as much as you can the organs marked smallest in your Chart + properly guide and exercise the stronger ones + thus produce a harmony of mental and physical action.” By using the phrenological readings of themselves or their children, Nineteenth Century Americans could apply the advice to become the best version of themselves. Practical phrenologists weren’t interested only in reform of the self, but in larger societal reform as well. For practical phrenologists, prisons were the site of both research and reform; they argued for the elimination of capital punishment and the reform of prisons to include re-education instead of punishment.  Despite the reform impulse of phrenologists, phrenology was also used as a scientific reason to justify racism and gender stereotyping. American phrenologists were sympathetic to liberal causes including the antislavery movement, even while claiming the superiority of the European brain. By the early 20th century phrenology had been largely discredited in the public, but some of the concepts of phrenology, including propensities and physical localization in the brain of different characteristics have persisted. In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of phrenology in 19th Century America and interviews Courtney Thompson, Assistant Professor of History at Mississippi State University, and author of the February 2021 book, An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “A head marked with images representing the phrenological faculties, with a key below. Coloured wood engraving, ca. 1845, after H. Bushea and O.S. Fowler.” Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-13. Sources:

An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America by Courtney E. Thompson

"Facing a Bumpy History: The much-maligned theory of phrenology gets a tip of the hat from modern neuroscience," by Minna Scherlinder Morse, Smithsonian Magazine, October 1997.

"Mesmerism and Phrenology in Antebellum Charleston: 'Enough of the Marvellous'" by Peter McCandless. The Journal of Southern History, 58(2), 199-230. doi:10.2307/2210860.

The History of Phrenology on the Web by John van Wyhe

Encyclopedia of medical history by Roderick E. McGrew and Margaret P. McGrew, 1985.

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In Chesapeake Bay in the late 19th century, oyster harvesting was a big business. There were so many oyster harvesters harvesting so many oysters that the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia had to start regulating who could harvest oysters and how they could do so. Creating the regulations was the easy part; enforcing them was much harder. The illegal harvesting of oysters by oyster pirates continued, even after the creation of the Maryland State Oyster Police Force in 1868 and a similar force in Virginia in 1884.  The first of the Oyster Wars was in Virginia in 1882 when Governor William E. Cameron himself joined the expedition to raid the pirates. The first raid was a success, but Cameron quickly learned that pirates wouldn’t stay defeated for long, and the oyster wars continued. By the late 1880s the Oyster Wars turned deadly. The Oyster Wars remained an important part of Chesapeake Bay history all the way until the “official” end of the Oyster Wars in 1959, although even that may have not truly been the end. In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of the Oyster Wars and (with a little help from her son, Arthur, interviews Jamie Goodall, author of Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “The oyster war in Chesapeake Bay,” Drawing by Schell and Hogan. Harper's Weekly, Mar. 1, 1884, p. 136. Library of Congress.Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-12. Sources:

Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars by Jamie L. H. Goodall

National Geographic Pirates: Shipwrecks, Conquests & Legacy by Jamie L. H. Goodall

The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay by John R Wennersten

The daily dispatch. (Richmond, VA), 04 March 1883. Library of Congress.

"Oyster Wars," Baltimore Sun, February 10, 2015.

Oyster Question: Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay Since 1880 by Christine Keiner

"An Evolving Force: Natural Resources Police Celebrates 150th Anniversary," Maryland Department of Natural Resources, March 30, 2018.

“Landscapes of Resistance: A View of the Nineteenth-Century Chesapeake Bay Oyster Fishery” by Bradford Botwick and Debra A. McClane. Historical Archaeology, vol. 39, no. 3, 2005, pp. 94–112.

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Popular depictions of prohibition in the United States usually show the speakeasies, bootleggers, flappers, and bathtub gin of the Roaring Twenties, but earlier attempts at prohibition stretch back far into the 19th century. In 1851, Maine passed the first statewide prohibition law, and 12 other states quickly followed as temperance societies preached the evils of alcohol. Anti-prohibitionists, especially liquor dealers and hotel owners, decried the “tyranny of the majority” and fought back with their own PR campaigns and legal challenges. Many of the methods that the anti-prohibitionists used and that were used by other moral minorities of the day (such as those fighting against Sunday Laws and those working toward racial equality) were precursors to the methods used in the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th century. In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of the 1850s Maine Laws and interviews Kyle Volk,  Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of HIstory at the University of Montana, and author of Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy, which discusses these early attempts at prohibition. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “The drunkard's children. A sequel to The bottle” by George Cruikshank, 1848, Wellcome Collection.Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-11. Sources:

Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy by Kyle Volk, 2017

“When Maine went dry,” by Kelly Bouchard, Portland Press Herald, October 2, 2011

The Maine Liquor Law: Its Origin, History, and Results, Including a Life of Hon. Neal Dow by Henry Stephen Clubb, 1856.

“Throwback Thursday: Maine Becomes the First State to Outlaw Alcohol,” by Madline Bilis, Boston Magazine, June 2, 2016

“What if the Fourth of July were dry?” by Kyle Volk, Oxford University Press Blog, July 4, 2014

An inquiry into the effects of ardent spirits upon the human body and mind: with an account of the means of preventing, and of the remedies for curing them by Benjamin Rush, 1784.

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In May of 1844, growing tensions between nativists and Irish Catholic immigrants in Philadelphia erupted into violence in the streets of the Irish Catholic Kensington district, prompted in part by a disagreement over whether the King James Bible should be read in public schools. A citizen posse called by county sheriff Morton McMichael was unable to quell the violence, and the local state militia, under the command of General George Cadwalader stepped in to help, as homes and churches were destroyed, $150,000 in damages (equivalent to over $4 million today). Fourteen people were killed and as many as 50 were injured. After two months of uneasy peace, the violence re-ignited, this time in the nativist district of Southwark where a Catholic church had been stockpiling weapons in anticipation of trouble. After a long stand-off, an hours-long battle between the military presence that arrived and the local nativists took over the streets of Southwark, as they fired at each other with guns and cannons. Another 15 people died, with fifty or more injuries. The riots, which got national attention, had lasting effects in politics and city planning and in the development of the Catholic school system in Philadelphia. In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of the Philadelphia riots and interviews George Mason University History Professor Zachary Schrag, author of The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: Riot in Philadelphia. July 7th 1844. by H. Bucholzer, ca. 1844. New York: James Baillie, July 23.  https://www.loc.gov/item/2003654121/Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-10. Sources:

The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation by Zachary M. Schrag 

"Nativist Riots of 1844," Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia by Zachary M. Schrag

"The Kensington Riots of 1844" by Melissa Mandell of Historical Society of Pennsylvania

"Chaos in the Streets: The Philadelphia Riots of 1844," Villanova University

A full and complete account of the late awful riots in Philadelphia (1844) by John Perry

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Elizabeth Packard was born in Massachusetts in 1816 into a comfortable home where her parents were able to provide for her education. She taught briefly at a girls’ school before at age 23 agreeing at her parents’ urging to marry 37-year-old Calvinist minister Theophilus Packard. Over the next 20 years Elizabeth was a devoted mother and housewife who grew the family’s vegetables and sewed clothes for their six children. To the outside world, it appeared to be a contented marriage, until Elizabeth started to publicly express her religious beliefs, which were at odds with her husband’s. Theophilus questioned her sanity and threatened to have her committed if she continued. Elizabeth continued, and Theophilus kept his promise, taking advantage of the law, which allowed a husband to have his wife committed, without either public hearing or her consent. After three years in the Illinois State Asylum and Hospital for the Insane in Jacksonville, Illinois, Elizabeth was deemed incurable and released. Then, after getting the jury trial she’d been requesting for three years, Elizabeth was finally able to share her story with the world, and she began her remarkable career as a writer and social reformer. In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of Elizabeth Packard’s life and interviews New York Times bestselling author Kate Moore, who has recently published a wonderfully detailed narrative account of Elizabeth Packard’s life, titled: The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image:  from Elizabeth Packard's 1866 book, Marital Power Exemplified in Mrs. Packard’s Trial. Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-9. Sources: 

The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore

"Declared Insane for Speaking Up: The Dark American History of Silencing Women Through Psychiatry," by Kate Moore. Time Magazine, June 22, 2021.

"Marital Power Exemplified in Mrs. Packard's Trial, and Self-Defence from the Charge of Insanity" by Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard

"Elizabeth Packard: Nineteenth-Century Crusader for the Rights of Mental Patients," by Myra Samuels Himelhoch and Arthur H. Shaffer, Journal of American Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Dec., 1979), pp. 343-375.

"Badass Elizabeth Series," Packed with Packards Blog.

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Mary Mallon, known to history as Typhoid Mary, immigrated from Northern Ireland to New York City at age 15, around 1883. She found work as a cook, a well paying job for an immigrant woman and worked for number of different families in the early 20th Century. In March 1907, civil engineer George Soper burst into the kitchen of the home where she was cooking and told her that she was spreading typhoid via her cooking. He demanded samples of her feces, urine, and blood to test. Mallon, who believed she was in perfect health, chased him away with a carving fork. Mallon spent most of the rest of her life in quarantine, on North Brother Island, forced to give regular stool and urine samples. She was briefly released, but knowing no other skills, cooked again and was forced back into quarantine. Although Mallon was the first person in the US identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid, by the time of her second quarantine in 1915, many healthy carriers had been identified, more than 400 in New York alone.  None of the other healthy carriers was forcibly confined, even the other cooks or those who caused more cases and more deaths than Mallon did. In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the history of Mary Mallon’s quarantines, and interviews Kari Nixon, an assistant professor of English at Whitworth University, who teaches medical humanities and Victorian literature. Dr. Nixon is author of the 2021 book Quarantine Life from Cholera to Covid-19: What Pandemics Teach Us about Parenting, Work, Life, and Communities from the 1700s to Today. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image from The New York American (June 20, 1909 issue).Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-8. Sources:

Quarantine Life from Cholera to Covid-19: What Pandemics Teach Us about Parenting, Work, Life, and Communities from the 1700s to Today, by Kari Nixon, 2021.

Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health, by Judith Walzer Leavitt, 1997.

Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative, by Priscilla Wald, 2008.

"The Work of a Chronic Typhoid Germ Distributor," by George Soper, JAMA. 1907; XLVIII(24):2019–2022.

"The sad and tragic life of Typhoid Mary," by J. Brooks, CMAJ. 1996;154(6):915-916.

"The Most Dangerous Woman in America," NOVA.

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In 1945, United States immigration officials opened the El Centro Immigration Detention Camp in El Centro, California, to be an administrative holding center for unauthorized Mexican migrants, many of whom had been working on local farms and ranches. From the beginning, migrants were often detained for long periods of time while they served as the unpaid labor force of the center. Conditions were poor in the facility in the decades that followed, and in 1985 the incarcerated migrants (by this time a multinational group) decided to strike. On May 27, 1985, fifteen detained men stormed the mess hall, inspiring somewhere between 175-300 more men to join them. The group refused to work, to go inside, or to eat until their grievances were met. Their complaints included inhumane conditions in the 120-degree heat of the Imperial Valley, poor food quality, inadequate medical treatment, lack of entertainment, physical abuse, psychological intimidation, solitary confinement, and threats of violence. The strike was put down forcefully by the El Centro Tactical Intervention and Control Unit, in full riot gear. Although some of the conditions that led to the strike improved, rampant violence and inhumane treatment continued. In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the history of the El Centro facility and the 1985 Hunger Strike, and interviews Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Jessica Ordaz, author of The Shadow of El Centro: A History of Migrant Incarceration and Solidarity. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image by Ralph (Ravi) Kayden on Unsplash.Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-7. Sources:

The Shadow of El Centro: A History of Migrant Incarceration and Solidarity by Jessica Ordaz. University of North Carolina Press, 2021.

"ICE immigration center in El Centro closes," by Tatiana Sanchez. The Desert Sun, October 1, 2014. 

"Aliens Staging Hunger Strike at Detention Camp," By Judith Cummings, Special To the New York Times, June 4, 1985.

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On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court decided unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas that that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Although the process was slow and contentious, the SCOTUS decisions in Brown and Brown II required that desegregation must occur "with all deliberate speed" to provide Black students with the equal protection under the law required by the 14th Amendment.  Black teachers had no protections or guarantees under the Brown ruling. As Southern states tried to destroy the NAACP using legislatures and courts, they targeted teachers with the belief that, as Candace Cunningham writes, “to dispense with Black teachers was to weaken the NAACP.  To dispose of Black teachers was to destabilize the civil rights movement.” In March 1956, the South Carolina general assembly passed a series of anti-NAACP statutes, including the anti-NAACP oath, which made it illegal for local, county, or state government employees to be NAACP members. In May 1956, in Elloree, South Carolina, 21 Black teachers refused to distance themselves from the NAACP, and the white school officials did not rehire them for the following year. The Elloree teachers, with NAACP lawyers, took their case to court in Bryan v. Austin in September 1956.  In this episode, Kelly tells the story of what happened with Black teachers in Elloree, South Carolina, in aftermath of Brown v. Board, and interviews Assistant Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University, Candace Cunningham. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: Civil rights march on Washington, D.C. Warren K. Leffler. 1963. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003654393/Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-6. Sources:

“Hell Is Popping Here in South Carolina”: Orangeburg County Black Teachers and Their Community in the Immediate Post-Brown Era," by Candace Cunningham, History of Education Quarterly, February 3, 2021.

"A Hidden History of Integration and the Shortage of Teachers of Color," by Cindy Long, NEA Today, March 11, 2020

"School Desegregation and Black Teacher Employment," Working Paper by Owen Thompson, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2019.

"65 Years After ‘Brown v. Board,’ Where Are All the Black Educators?" by Madeline Will, EdWeek, May 14, 2019.

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Political activism of queer people in the United States started long before the Stonewall riots in 1969. One surprising place that queer people found a home for their activism was in the Communist Party. The Communist Party of the United States was established in 1919, and from the 1920s to the 1940s the Party was influential in American politics, at the forefront of labor organizing and opposition to racism. It was the first political party in the US to be racially integrated. Some queer folks embraced the radical politics of the Party and found it to be a place where they could agitate for radical sexual politics as well.  One of the first national gay rights organizations in the United States, The Mattachine Society, was founded in 1950 by prominent Communist Harry Hay and a group of friends in Los Angeles. However, in the early 1950s as Joseph McCarthy and others publicly linked homosexuality and Communism as threats to the 'American way of life,' homosexuals began to distance themselves from the Left to gain acceptance, and the previous links between homosexuals and the Communist Party were lost or suppressed. In 1953 Harry Hay was ousted from the Mattachine Society in part because of his Communist affiliation, which by then was considered a liability. In this episode, Kelly  tells the history of homosexuality and the Communist Party in America in the early 20th Century and interviews Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston Aaron Lecklider, author of Love’s Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons.  Episode image: Members of Marine Cooks and Stewards Union. Courtesy Black Heritage Society of Washington State. Public domain.Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-5Sources:

Love's Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture, by Aaron Lecklider, 2021

"Despite Everything, Queer Leftists Survived," by Scott W. Stern, Jacobin Magazine, June 2021.

"Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement," PBS

"Communist Party USA History and Geography," Mapping American Social Movements Project, University of Washington

"Homophiles': The LGBTQ rights movement began long before Stonewall," by Ben Kesslen, NBC News, June 10, 2019

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Sophonisba “Nisba” Preston Breckinridge, born April 1, 1866, was a woman of firsts. Breckinridge was the first woman admitted to the Kentucky bar to practice law in 1895; the first woman to earn a PhD in Political Science at the University of Chicago in 1901; the first woman to earn a JD at the University of Chicago Law School in 1904; the first woman professor granted a named professorship at the University of Chicago in 1929; and the first woman to serve as U.S. representative to a high-level international conference in 1933. Along the way, Breckinridge co-founded the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Social Service Administration (now the The Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice), was instrumental in the creation and promotion of The Social Security Act of 1935 and The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and published extensively in the fields of  family, public welfare, and children. Kelly briefly tells Breckinridge’s story and interviews Anya Jabour, Regents Professor of History at the University of Montana, and author of  Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women's Activism in Modern America. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: By Bain News Service - Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.07524. Public Domain.Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-4 Sources:

Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women's Activism in Modern America by Anya Jabour, University of Illinois Press, 2019

"Sophonisba Breckinridge," The Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice

"Reclaiming Sophonisba," University of Chicago Law School, by Becky Beaupre Gillespie, January 6, 2020

"‘Forgotten Feminist’ Sophonisba Breckinridge was a Woman of Many Firsts" by Meredith Francis, WTTW, October 7, 2020

"When lesbians led the women’s suffrage movement," The Conversation, by Anya Jabour, January 24, 2020

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Susie King Taylor was born into slavery in Georgia in 1848. With the help of family members, she was educated and escaped, joining the Union army at the age of 14, to serve ostensibly as a laundress, but in reality as a nurse, teacher, and even musket preparer. In 1902, Taylor published Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops, an autobiography that covers not just her experiences during the Civil War, but also her childhood and her later years. Taylor includes in the work her powerful analysis of race relations at the beginning of 20th Century. Kelly briefly tells Taylor’s remarkable story and interviews Ben Railton, Professor of American literature and American Studies at Fitchburg State University, and author of Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: Susie King Taylor,  Published by the subject, 1902 [from a photograph taken earlier]. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Public Domain. Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-3.Sources:

Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops by Susie King Taylor

"Susie King Taylor: An African American Nurse and Teacher in the Civil," Library of Congress 

The Susie King Taylor Women's Institute and Ecology Center

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Just after midnight on May 15, 1970, officers opened fire on a group of unarmed students milling in front of a dorm on the campus of Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, killing two and wounding twelve. Although the shootings took place just a week and a half after the shootings at Kent State University, the Jackson State shootings never got the attention of those at Kent State, and when they did they were often described as a second Kent State, erasing the context of white supremacy and state-based violence that inform what happened in Jackson.  Kelly tells the tragic story of the Jackson State shootings and interviews Nancy Bristow, Professor of History at the University of Puget Sound, and author of Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College to find out more. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: Alexander Hall, viewed from across Lynch Street, National Archives. Public Domain.Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-2Sources:

Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College by Nancy K. Bristow

"The Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest." Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402, 1970.

“Program about the Jackson State Killings, Jackson, Mississippi,” WYSO, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC.

"50 Years After the Jackson State Killings, America's Crisis of Racial Injustice Continues—and Shows the Danger of Forgetting," Time Magazine, by Nancy K. Bristow, May 14, 2020

"The Jackson State shootings are often overlooked. But Rich Caster still remembers." The Washington Post, by Kevin B. Blackstone, May 14, 2020.

"GIBBS/GREEN 51st COMMEMORATION 2021," Jackson State University, May 15, 2021. [Facebook Video]

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Between America’s entry into World War I and the end of the war less than two years later, Americans knit 23 million articles of clothing and bandages for soldiers overseas, directed by the American Red Cross. How was this knitting organized? Who did the knitting? And why don’t more people know about this impressive feat? Kelly digs into the story of World War I knitting efforts and interviews Holly Korda, author of The Knitting Brigades of World War I: Volunteers for Victory in America and Abroad to find out more. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode Image: Women knit at the Red Cross Knitting Booth while waiting for their trains at New York’s Grand Central Station, 1918. NATIONAL ARCHIVES/ 20802094. Episode Transcript available at: https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-episode-1Sources:

The Knitting Brigades of World War I by Holly Korda.

"The Wool Brigades of World War I, When Knitting was a Patriotic Duty," Atlas Obscura.

"Knitting for Victory — World War I," History Link.

"Showing support for the Great War with knitting needles," Smithsonian.

"'Knit Your Bit': The American Red Cross Knitting Program," Center for Knit and Crochet.

"Wilson's Sheep," The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum.

"Knitted Articles for the American Red Cross," The Delineator, V.91 1917. [Knitting Patterns]

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A podcast about the people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet. With host Kelly Therese Pollock.In each episode of Unsung History I’ll start us out with a short narrative answering the Who, What, When, and Where to introduce you to the topic, and then I’ll talk to someone who can help us learn the Why and How: a historian or other academic, a journalist or researcher, or someone who was there when history as history unfolded.  Launching June 7, 2021. Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/UnsungHistory) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices